


Land of Phantoms

by brasspetal



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Dark Fantasy, Developing Relationship, Grief, Horror, M/M, Minor Character Death, Modern times, Violence, persephone myth au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-18 10:18:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 37,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11872281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brasspetal/pseuds/brasspetal
Summary: He’s staring at something that looks like a house, but was it? It has the usual shape, the structure of one but beyond that, he couldn’t say.--John Silver is the new caregiver to an elderly Mrs. Hamilton and James Flint is an author of obscure fiction who lives at the estate. Silver knows there is something exceptionally wrong going on there but the allure of it pulls him into a dark spiral.





	1. The Mountain

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a dark horror story with fantasy elements. Inspired by the Mabel podcast (it isn't required that you listen to it, but I highly recommend it) I have a lot of it planned out already and I hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think :)

Dark clouds swarmed the sky, smothering the world below with rain. The trees are blurred smudges in the downpour. The land has no color; no identity beneath it.

John Silver’s hair is plastered to his face as he looked towards the hill where the house resided. He doesn’t know how long he’d been standing there. It was as if all sense of time had left him the moment he laid eyes on _that_ house. His fingers are numb and he feels chilled, the kind that reaches deep in the bone.

The house. There’s no proper way to describe it. It’s more of a feeling; a knowing.

There’s a gravel pathway leading up the hill, with muddy grass peeking up from beneath the rocks. The vegetation surrounding the property is unkempt but not enough to be wild. He somehow knows it was once but it’s been tamed.

 _The house._ He half remembers it from a dream. It was like it could see him. It’s large and eerily foreboding. It terrified him. He’s staring at something that looked like a house, but was it? It had the usual shape, the structure of one but beyond that, he couldn’t say. Through that strange terror, he wanted to know it.

It was the first time he started to question his perception in quite a long while. It struck him silent. It struck him still. It held him. The moment was defining. That’s why he stood in the rain for an unknowable amount of time. That’s why his fingers pruned.

It was so quiet except for the pitter patter of raindrops and the soft sound of wet against weed.

John Silver has worked as a caregiver for a few years now. He’s moved from house to house like the grim reaper but he’s yet to get used to it. He doesn’t think he ever will. He doesn’t have many friends because he’s a nomad and his past is a locked room. He wasn’t trying to be mysterious, people exist as living ghosts, don’t they? They haunt the world but never truly interact with it. He wasn’t much of a joiner.

He walks up the gravel path and the sound of his crunching shoes echoes beyond, setting him on edge. It was as if the house is sleeping and he didn’t dare wake it.

He knew about Mrs. Hamilton, she was the one who he was supposed to be caring for. An elderly woman with not long to live. He knew that a man named James Flint also lived with her on the property. They weren’t related, that much he can glean. Flint is more notable. He’s an author of obscure mythic fiction. Silver had never read any of his works but he had heard they were of the old-world variety. The stories being brutal, unforgiving, and abstract. Not something that would get him a bestseller but Flint seemed to have enough of a following from what Silver had heard.

He met James Flint for the first time when he answered the door and invited Silver inside. He had an otherworldly look about him. It was the first thing that came to Silver’s mind. _Otherworldly_ , like he didn’t belong outside of this house. Inside the house, however, Flint fit like a puzzle piece. His eyes were hooded and the kind of sea-brine green he hadn’t seen before. He had red hair that was swept away from his temples and a small beard to match. He seemed friendly enough but reserved.

“John Silver is it?”

This house is alive and he had just met its gatekeeper. Flint is polite but the more Silver stood in the foyer and the longer he waited to answer, he could see it. He could see something in those eyes of his. Something old. Unspoken. It was like Flint knew he could see it too and the small feigned smile on Flint’s lips began to fade. He looked sad, maybe? Like he just received some bad news.

“Yes, and you’re James Flint I presume.” Silver finally replies and the air is uncomfortably thin.

Flint didn’t ask Silver if he knew of him or his work. He didn’t ask him if he read his books if he was a fan. He didn’t say anything like that. For which Silver was grateful.

“Mrs. Hamilton has been looking forward to meeting you. We don’t get much company here. It can get rather dreary after too long.” Flint adds and then there’s that small smile again but there was something beneath it this time or maybe it was always there?

“It’s…very quiet here. I’ve never seen a house like this before. It’s exceptional.” Silver gives him a smile of his own. Flint breaks eye contact when he notices.

The house is three floors, very old, of gothic architecture. Inside, the walls are dark wood and the floors creaked like you’re walking on someone's backbone but it was well taken care of from what he could tell.  This house is loved, that much is clear.

Flint shows Silver into what appears to be the kitchen. A cup of tea is waiting for him on a small table overlooking the garden terrace out back. An empty cup sits across from it. The kitchen is large, open, modernized with proper appliances and shiny reflective surfaces.

Silver sits down at the small table and gazes out of the large window beside him. It’s blurry from the rainy fog that snuck around the property, obscuring the view he imagines would be beautiful.

Down the concrete steps and onto the grass, further still, was a forest. A forest of tangled branches and overgrown vines with moss covered trunks.

“I used to play in those woods as a boy.” Silver hears and it snaps him out from his trance. He hadn’t realized Flint was sitting across from him and he too was looking out beyond the garden. Silver watches him, studies his profile as he did the woods. Silver found looking at James Flint was just as pleasant. Flint moves his attention back to the empty cup; his expression forlorn.

Silver gives him a smile he doesn’t notice, “Plenty of adventures and tales to tell, I imagine.”  

Flint fiddles with the cup and glances up at Silver, the sadness displayed is more evident than ever.

Flint takes a breath to speak, “This is going to sound odd and I’m sorry there is no other way to go about it but I strongly suggest that you keep out of the woods and the garden at night. I ask that you keep off the third floor at night as well. This house is old and you hear strange things, don’t pay any attention. It’s been this way for a very long time. I spend most of my time in my office, which is on the second floor at the very end of the hall and you can come to me with anything at any time. In fact, I suggest coming to me about anything unusual that troubles you because to put it bluntly, Mr. Silver, you will experience some odd things here.”

Shouldn’t this frighten him? Shouldn’t this be an indicator that something is wrong? This man with his sad eyes, strange stories, and even stranger history. Shouldn’t this be what makes Silver want to leave?

 _Shouldn’t this be_ …

“What happened here?” The question tumbles out of Silver without volition and it’s too late to take it back. But Silver knows you can’t take back anything that’s said. Once a thing is said, once a thing is asked, it remains stuck in the air.

Flint sits back in his chair and finally meets his eyes. His gaze is intensely unreadable. Silver can’t look away. Not even if he wanted to. He tries to remedy the change in the air, “I’m sorry, you don’t have to answer that.”

“You’ll meet Mrs. Hamilton tomorrow.” Is Flint’s curt reply. It signaled the end of all conversation for the time being. Silver presses his lips together and nods before standing.

The room Silver’s staying in is large, with a four-post bed. It had little embroidered flowers on the duvet. The mattress wasn’t the best, it creaked with his every movement but who was he to complain. This room had been lived in before him and he wondered whose it was. The wallpaper is old but none of it seemed to be peeling. A light coating of dust lies on the window sill, that the curtains brushed against when he opened them. This house had something to say, it had something to tell him. He just had to figure out a way to listen.

That night, while browsing on his phone in bed, he notices it. He shines his phone’s light above him and there on the canopy wood right above his head is a small painted eye. It looked like something a child drew, long ago. Silver blanches and tilts his head against his pillow at it. He proceeds to spend the rest of the night, staring at it, even when it was too dark to see. It’s disconcerting how a bed could possibly be watching him.

In the light of day though, it’s barely visible and that discomfort started to lessen or at least he convinced himself it lessened.

\--

Mrs. Hamilton is an interesting woman. She had a kind face, dark blue eyes like the color of a pond that reflected the sky. Her hair is long and braided at the side and it hung over her shoulder. She’s beautiful, like the house itself.

They talked for a long time that first day. He can’t remember how much time had passed. She’d laugh at his sarcasm of all things and he found he really enjoyed her company. She’s easy to speak with, unlike Flint, with all of his bewitching stoicism. Silver wants to know everything about this family. He wants to know who James Flint is to Mrs. Hamilton. He wants to know why they were both so undeniably sad, why they both lived in this maze of an eerie house. It was as if they’re waiting for someone to return to it, someone who more than likely, never will.

A week rolls by like the fog that surrounded this place. He finds a routine rather quickly and had only seen Flint once since their first meeting. Silver had been standing in the kitchen overlooking the terrace and he spotted Flint walking towards the woods. The fog had become so thick he could hardly see anything. Flint disappeared in it for a few minutes like an apparition but not long after, reappeared, stalking back towards the house. He heard the back door creak open and oddly hoped that he’d join him but he didn’t.

A week had not been long enough to get to use to the sounds of the house. The howling wind against his window pane and the way it shook and cracked. It kept him awake. There were the small creaks that any old house would make and then there’s the singing, very faint singing. He didn’t dare investigate further and chalked it up to it being Mrs. Hamilton. It was like a lullaby, a very old lullaby. It sounded familiar, oddly enough. That was the most disturbing thing Silver found about it. It’s like the house had reached into his childhood. Silver’s sleeping habits grew very erratic after that.  

He’d sit up in the morning, his hair a mess and hardly able to keep his eyes open. He’d hide it well though, he was always good at pretending. Of course, there was _nothing_ to be afraid of, of course not.

The large glass doors to the garden terrace were wide open this day, letting the breeze in and Mrs. Hamilton insisted on sitting outside for a while. Silver is cutting up a cucumber for cucumber sandwiches. It was her favorite thing. Tea and cucumber sandwiches. He’d cut them small because she’d prefer it that way. He carries them out to Mrs. Hamilton who is looking out to the horizon where the hills meet the dim gloom of the sky.

“Do you sing?” Silver asks without preamble.

The wind blows a small strand of her hair across her cheek. She points out to the hills and says, “That’s where my son Thomas used to play.”  

There’s no polite etiquette for an announcement like that. Besides the sympathetic hums and noises, one makes in return.

Silver opens his mouth to speak, to quell his growing curiosity, when Mrs. Hamilton adds, “They found him in the mountain.”

She didn’t look at him at all. It’s as if it isn’t him she’s speaking to but the land itself.


	2. Letters

Flint is replacing a rotten board near the door leading out to the garden. Silver can hear the grunts and splintering of wood. He wants to apologize but he doesn’t really know why. He felt like they got off on the wrong side of things. They haven’t spoken a word to each other since that first meeting. The hammer starts up again and Silver pours Mrs. Hamilton some tea as she reads a book at the small table beside the window. “Did you dream?” Mrs. Hamilton asks casually and flips a page in her book. This wasn’t the first time she’d asked. He avoided the question then too.

He avoided it because he did dream.

He was trapped in an abandoned library, all the books were soggy, molded over and decaying. There was dripping water coming from somewhere far off that he couldn’t quite pinpoint. What he did know, was that there was someone in there with him. He thinks it was a man but he couldn’t really see his face. It was partially obscured in shadow.  He stood beneath a giant hole in the ceiling, a hole that held nothing but static dead air. He could only see his mouth. He kept saying the same word; mouthing it in the darkness. He thinks he was trying to make sure that Silver remembered it but he didn’t. He only remembered the shape of it.

\--

Lunch is different this time. Silver usually ate with Mrs. Hamilton out on the garden terrace and she’d ask him questions, personal questions that he’d skirt around and reply with something that would banish the subject. This time though when they are sitting out in the garden, Flint joins them. He made himself a sandwich identical to theirs and he sat in a metal chair across from them. From a bird’s eye view, the three of them would make a triangle.

Mrs. Hamilton smiles at Flint and says, kindly, “You’ve been hard at work all day.”

Flint’s skin is pale and there’s a smattering of freckles across his collarbone which is visible in the sunlight. His cheeks are flushed and he’s sweating a little from carrying the boards to the compost.  Silver realizes that Flint is staring at him as if he’s about to ask him a question. “How do you like it here?” Mrs. Hamilton looks to Silver quietly before taking a sip of her tea.

“It’s like living in another world, to be honest. I’ve never been anywhere quite like it.” Silver answers truthfully.

Flint huffs, “I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.”

“It is. It’s good, believe me.”

It’s Flint’s turn to finally study Silver’s face and he isn’t shy about it, just matter-of-fact. Silver did find it frustrating that he is an exceptionally hard man to read. The man’s thoughts clearly filled his skull but to know one of those thoughts, a true thought, would be a challenge for anyone.

Mrs. Hamilton smiles at Silver, “It’s been a long time since we’ve had anyone here.”

Flint presses his lips together and sits back as if exiting the conversation without getting up.

“What about holidays? No obnoxious family members then?” Silver asks looking between them and he notices the change almost immediately. The tension grew unbearable in a matter of seconds. 

Mrs. Hamilton answers on a cough, “We’re the only ones left.”

Silver doesn’t really know why but his throat constricts. It hurt to hear it and he could feel that pain bouncing between them like a rubber ball. The triangle they created broke when Flint stood from the seat, leaving them.

“I’m sorry.” Silver says and it wasn’t enough, of course, it wasn’t enough.

\--

That night Silver couldn’t find sleep, it was lost to him. It was one of those nights where no part of him could rest where he set it. He’s worried about Mrs. Hamilton, he’s worried about Flint but he doesn’t really know why. He’s worried about his own future. What it will resemble. If it will ever look any different from this night. This time. This John Silver. He can’t stop thinking about the singing he had heard those nights ago. He can’t stop thinking about what could have happened to Mrs. Hamilton’s son Thomas. He can’t stop thinking about why he can’t go to the third floor at night.

So, he does what he usually did…what he was asked not to. He’s living here, after all. Shouldn’t he be curious for his own safety?

Mrs. Hamilton is a deep sleeper, not much could wake her. He’s unsure about Flint but he imagines he’s the type to wake up if Silver breathed two rooms over. He rarely ever comes out of his room once he’s retired for the night that Silver’s seen. He wondered absently if he ever snuck around as a kid like this late into the night. He’s not sure how far his relationship with Mrs. Hamilton goes back to but perhaps Flint and Thomas grew up together. Maybe they were the inseparable sort. They’d find those dark hills, that mountain in the distance, achievable rather than terrifying. Flint doesn’t strike him as someone who was ever afraid of the dark. Not even as a child. Silver knows it’s a funny thing to think but Mrs. Hamilton likes to tell stories and Silver knows him like he would a character in a book. That is to say, not much at all but that didn’t stop the questions from claiming his foremost thoughts.

Silver stands at the top of stairs to the third floor by a bedroom door that he suspects no one has used for some time. There are tall mirrors aligning the hall with strangely carved frames. He didn’t understand why this unused hallway needed so many mirrors.  It didn’t seem to be a decorative decision, more out of necessity? Silver doesn’t look at the mirrors as he passes them, perhaps it was out of fear but he didn’t know what to fear. The only open door is at the end of the irritatingly long hallway. It’s dark in the room, the moonlight is shining in from a window where the curtains had been pulled open almost deliberately. It’s not a bedroom, in fact, there’s no furniture in the room at all. The only thing inside it is a cardboard box in the middle of the room. The top of it was sitting open as if someone had been going through it recently and was interrupted.

At this point, as he slowly steps into the room, he wonders why the hell he was doing this in the first place? What was the point? He ignores logic and steps over to the box to peer inside. There’s a bundle of letters at the top. They are just sitting there, begging Silver to inspect them. Now, this was snooping. This was something beyond dumbly exploring. He reached for the bundle of letters and as his fingers meet the paper there’s a horrified wail from downstairs.  

\--

Silver had never heard anyone scream like that. The fact that it was coming from Mrs. Hamilton made it all the more terrifying. Flint was there with him in Mrs. Hamilton’s bedroom, he looked like he hadn’t been sleeping at all. His hair wasn’t disheveled and his clothes weren’t creased. There’s a question on his face as they are calming Mrs. Hamilton. It’s as if he wanted to know what Silver had done but he didn’t ask.

She stopped screaming eventually and when she did she breathlessly grabbed Silver’s arm to tug him towards her. She looks up at him, wide eyes filled with certain terror and says, “It isn’t him.” And then she said it again and again. _It isn’t him._

It took the rest of the night for Mrs. Hamilton to finally calm down. When she finally fell asleep they left the room, shutting the door quietly behind them. They stood there in that darkened hallway, exhausted. Flint’s looking at him, waiting patiently as if he could read Silver’s mind.

“I went on the third floor. I was on the third floor when she started screaming.” Silver confesses quickly and surprisingly Flint doesn’t look angry at him just dejected, defeated.

“Why?” He breathes.

“You can’t fault me for wanting to explore this house. I mean…really?” Silver tries to smile but he knows it resembles a grimace. Flint was not amused and it’s then he can finally see the anger.

Silver holds up his hands in surrender, “There was a box. It was open and there were letters.”

He half expected to be thrown out of the house but Flint’s anger faded to confusion.

“What letters?”

“They were wrapped in twine.” Silver replies.  Flint looks suddenly spooked and the darkened hallway felt smaller, constricted.

“Show me.”

 --

The new dawn sparked light beneath the drawn curtains as they ascended the stairs to the third floor. Silver still doesn’t look in the mirrors aligning the hallway and neither does Flint. The door to the room with the letters is closed but Silver clearly remembers not closing it when he fled to reach Mrs. Hamilton. He points to the door, hesitantly and Flint pushes it open. Inside was the empty room, this time completely devoid of anything. The box isn’t there.

Silver flounders a few words before he settles on, “It’s gone.”

“Don’t…come up here at night.” Is Flint’s response. His back is to Silver and he’s looking down at the empty space on the floor where the box had been as if it could suddenly materialize.

Silver crosses his arms and sighs with an, “I’m sorry.”

Flint’s shoulders are rigid and there’s a static electricity in the air as if lightning were about to strike.

Silver adds, “I was going to make pancakes.”

He turns to face Silver then, the anger gone. The shirt he’s wearing is frayed at the ends as if he could unravel.

Flint says, quietly, “I’ll make them. You go sit with Mrs. Hamilton.”

They stand there for a moment on opposite sides of the room, a slice of light between them as if it’s a barrier and their eyes don’t break contact. Silver doesn’t know how to describe it. It was like he was almost remembering something. Something very important, something he shouldn’t forget but he can’t seem to bring it into the light.

“Whose room am I staying in?” Silver blurts out the question and it shatters the deafening silence to pieces.

Flint keeps his eyes on Silver’s when he says, calmly, “Her name was Eleanor.”


	3. Hold with the Hare

There’s a man out in the street.

He’s been there since Silver brought Mrs. Hamilton down for her breakfast that Flint cooked. He’s been making breakfast for the past few days since that incident they don’t talk about. It’s not for lack of trying, but Flint is good at shutting topics of conversation down. Silver would be lying if he said he wasn’t a bit intimidated.

She’s listening to the radio in the front room and Silver is supposed to be cleaning her dishes but instead, he’s peeking out behind the window next to the kitchen door. It’s not as if the man out in the street had done anything particularly odd. He’s just standing there, smoking, deep in thought. There is nothing in his behavior that would suggest ill-intent, yet Silver can’t stop staring.

Live inside yourself for long enough and you’ll start to see anything external, anything remotely odd as significant. And it does seem significant.

“Did you know that James never broke a bone in this house?” Mrs. Hamilton says and Silver’s thoughts scatter.

“Is that so?”

 “It protects him because he respects it. If you respect it then it will protect you too, John.” She’s smiling kindly at him and he tries to return it.  

“What does it protect him from?” There’s deafening silence after the question as if someone muted the world around them. Mrs. Hamilton begins to violently cough against her hand and Silver rushes to get her a glass of water.  His hand knocks against a porcelain bowl in the commotion, smashing it to the floor. He whispers a quick ‘sorry’ to the dish.

Once he’s handed her the water and her coughing officially subsided he sets to picking up the broken porcelain pieces strewn across the kitchen floor. He feels the sharp sting in the palm of his hand and watches a trail of blood form, sliding down his wrist. The cut isn’t deep, luckily and he used a towel to wrap around his hand for the time being. Was it odd to think it almost felt like punishment?

\--

The man on the street knocked on the door at 11:11 pm. It’s a strange symmetry, isn’t it? Palindromes. Silver had always found them fascinating. There’s something honest about them.

Silver opens the door and the man is standing there, smoking his cigarette. He looked like the eccentric sort, skinny, bored easily. He appeared bored now. He didn’t even bother to look up from his phone. He didn’t look threatening in the slightest. This guy had been standing in front of the estate for several hours at this point and he had finally decided to knock.

“I’m a bit…lost. There isn’t any fucking reception out here.” The man exclaims, exasperated. He still hasn’t looked up at Silver from his phone.

“Where is it you’re headed?” Silver asks and he isn’t sure how much help he’ll be. Come to think of it, how long had it been since he’s left this house himself?

The man lets out a grumpy sigh of disapproval and walks away from the door but doesn’t leave. He goes back to standing by the street, looking at his phone again.

\--

Mrs. Hamilton is taking a nap and Flint is fixing her radio. It had fallen off the counter somehow. Silver had just come back into the room and it was in pieces on the floor. Flint can fix it though. It seems he can fix most things. It’s almost like magic.

Silver takes the opportunity to break the monotonous silence. “You ever notice the electricity is a bit whimsical here?”

Flint actually smiles a little at that while looking up from the radio and replies, “It comes and goes, it doesn’t seem to have any fixed laws.”

“Lights will turn themselves on without touching the switch. It happened upstairs several times.”

He nods, understanding, “They just want to remind you that they’re there.”

Silver laughs this time because this is ridiculous and says, “Your lights need reassurance?”

Flint glances away from him as if he’s formulating what to say. “This house is grand. I know this. I sometimes go into rooms that aren’t used to turn on the lights and I sometimes sit there in the quiet. Every room in this house is important. Every corner, every crack.”

Maybe to anyone else that would sound mad but to Silver it sounded humbling, kind. Flint and Mrs. Hamilton treat this house like they are visitors. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

“That’s rather humbling…” Silver gives him a side smile.

Then out of nowhere as if Flint had reached into Silver’s mind and plucked out a question he says, “Eleanor passed away. She used to paint. Some of the paintings you see around the house are hers.”

“Which ones?” Silver asks and Flint points, “The one in the foyer is hers.”

Silver guesses he wanted him to look at it now so he obliges this odd turn in topic and walks from the kitchen to the foyer where the large painting sits against the wall; snug as if it belonged. It’s a painting of a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea. It’s beautifully done with muted colors. Silver glances out of the window by the door to see the blurry figure of the man still standing outside.

Silver walks back into the kitchen mid-sentence, “It’s very—” he stops.

Flint’s gone. The tools sit against the radio but he isn’t there any longer. Was that some sort of distraction to get him to leave the room? But why?

The doorbell dings loudly, startling Silver out of the uneasy quiet. It’s 12:21 pm.

It’s raining now outside, soft and comforting. When he answers the door the man’s hair is wet and he’s holding his phone which appears to be dead. He’s finally looking Silver.  All he could think of is how sad he appeared, drenched and tragic.

“Still lost I gather?” Silver asks when instead he wanted to ask him why the fuck he was here in the first place.

“The names…Jack..Rackham.” The man recites and he doesn’t even look sure of that himself. Silver opened the door wider and Jack stepped back. He appeared terrified. He kept looking behind Silver at something but when Silver turns to follow his eyeline, nothing is there, just the foyer. Just Eleanor’s painting of a dead ship but Jack wasn’t looking at the painting he was looking behind Silver’s shoulder.

“You okay? You seem spooked?” Silver questions. His eyes were flickering back and forth between Silver and whatever it was he saw behind him. This time, he mouthed something without speaking. Silver squints at him on the verge of slamming the door shut on this insanity. He recognizes the shapes, the words he was saying without speaking. They formed: _‘Get out’_

Jack shakes his head as if dazed and walks away. This time he kept walking. He never did come back.

\--

Silver’s heart is a drum and walking back into the kitchen, he searches the corners of the room with his eyes. A new paranoia has blossomed. Jack Rackham could have very well been a madman but he didn’t appear so. He seemed so very lost.  He spots Flint then, walk in from the back door and Silver stands in the doorway to the kitchen. He’s soaked and shivering. His clothes are dripping all over the floor.

Silver hesitates and asks, “Go for a stroll in the downpour, I see?”  

“It wasn’t a stroll.” He adds sternly, an anger beneath his tone. Not an anger for Silver but an anger for someone, something. An old anger, one that’s been burning for a long time. Silver didn’t know how he knew that but he did.

“There was a man at the door named Jack Rackham? Looked spooked.”

There’s a moment of silent eye contact and he watches as Flint's eyes roam over his shoulders, his lips and back to his eyes. Silver felt vulnerable in a way he hadn’t for a very long time or if at all.

“We get odd ones around here sometimes. People who think they’re lost when they aren’t.” Flint replies.

“What the hell does that mean?” Silver can’t stop himself. The questions were piling far too high, he could hardly see anything else.

“It _means_ that you have to watch yourself, Mr. Silver.” Flint grits and Silver eyes him.

“Is that a threat?”

“No. It’s a warning.” Flint states and suddenly leaves voiding the tension from the room. There’s a small puddle left behind on the floor where he stood and dripped the rainwater from his soaked clothes. Silver stares at it for the longest time and the more he looked, the more it appears to be evaporating as if the house is consuming it. Soon there was never any water there at all.

\--

Late that night Silver spends the darkest hours poring over books in the mini library upstairs. Silver found he loves the smell of old books and the feel of the pages crinkling beneath his fingers. He imagines Flint never leaving this room for days on end. He smiles and runs his fingers across the binding of one of the books Flint has written. He picks it up, it’s weighty in his hand. It’s called “The King in the Labyrinth”.

He skims through some of the pages until he suddenly comes to a part in the book that’s been cut out, carved out, with an Exacto knife. In the hollow space is a small record, the label has been scribbled on and it reads: _Hold with the hare._

He mouths the words with confusion before he spots the record player against the wall, illuminated by flickering candles. He stands from his haphazard pile of books he’s been flipping through and opens the record player, setting the record on it. He turns it on and the crackling noise begins and he shuts his eyes, waiting for whatever it is to begin.

Nothing ever happens. He doesn’t hear anything. He opens his eyes after a little while and stares at the record player with disappointment. There’s just the crackling like eggshells in the soft distance. He turns it off and that’s when he hears a tapping sound. It had come from the direction of the window but he’s unable to see what caused it because the bookshelves were blocking his view of it. He stands there quietly and then the tapping begins again, rhythmic, like a knock. Silver’s brows crease in apprehension as he slowly walks past the shelves, past the pile of books he created and around the corner to reveal the window. _Tap. Tap. Tap._

A thick expensive looking curtain covers the window.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

He nears the rope to pull it open and the night is slowly revealed to him. The tapping has ceased and there on the windowsill is a crow, just sitting there, staring at him.

“Hello there.” Silver says casually and the crow doesn’t move. He moves closer to the window and the crow adjusts its eyeline so that Silver remains in it. It’s the strangest feeling, to be studied so closely by a wild bird.

“Is there something you needed?” Silver asks and feels absolutely ridiculous carrying on a conversation with a crow at two in the morning. He moves in closer, noticing that there is something small tied to its leg.  It’s a very tiny piece of paper, rolled up, like a message. The crow remains a silent observer. Silver bites his lip and stares at the latch that could open the window. The crow could very well peck him to death he suspects, couldn’t it? It is exceptionally creepy. He reaches for the latch against his better judgment and opens the window to let the night air inside. It’s refreshing for a moments breath.

“May I see what you have there?” Silver asks politely and the crow just stares. It would require him to peek his head out of the opening. He truly has lost his mind. He slowly moves partially outside of the window. The crow flaps its wings, startling Silver back and forcing him to hit his head against the pane. He cringes and the crow squawks. He somehow thinks the crow is mocking him. He reaches out slowly to the bird and stays still, waiting for him to take the note. He pulls it from its leg gently and moves back inside, shutting the window. It doesn’t fly away as he thought it would, it stays, staring.

“Sorry, crow.” He says as he slowly closes the curtains. He unravels the small piece of old parchment paper and reads: _Knock thrice and it won’t have been in Vane._

‘Vane’ is spelled wrong and capitalized as if it were a name. This still made absolutely no sense but to think anything here would is generous. Knock thrice? Knock thrice where? Silver didn’t feel like attempting it tonight. He’s had his fill of madness for the time being. He stuck the note in his pocket and cleaned up the pile of books, organizing them properly again in their rightful places. All set to dawn the stage again some other night.

\--

Sleep didn’t find him. He didn’t suspect it would, it hasn’t been much of a friend lately. He looks up where that drawn eye would be if he could see it. It’s too dark now. He turns over on his side and his heart jumps when he hears the tapping again. This time coming from his window.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Silver whispers to the dark room. The tapping continues. He throws the covers off of himself and gets up from the bed. He stumbles over an ottoman in the dark before reaching the window. The tapping has stopped by the time he reaches the curtains and when he pulls them back the bird isn’t there. There’s nothing there but the dark and his reflection. His hair is disheveled from tossing around in bed. Then there’s the tapping again, only it isn’t coming from the window. It’s coming from outside his bedroom door. He turns slowly towards it, eyeing the dark with certain unabashed fear. The tapping continues. “Shit..” Silver breathes and grabs a poker from beside an unused fireplace.  It had old cobwebs attached to it still. _Tap. Tap. Tap._ It's softer this time though, slower.

“Hello?” Silver asks his door. There’s silence for a moment and the tapping has stopped.

“John.” A muffled voice replies.

“Jesus…” Silver breathes, “Mrs. Hamilton?”

He drops the poker and opens the bedroom door a little to peek into the hallway. Only she isn’t there. No one is. It's just an empty dark hallway, eerily creaking back at him. He shut the door quick, trying to calm his breathing and he slid down to the floor against it. It’s then he comes to the conclusion that he will never sleep again.


	4. Run with the Hounds

Silver had fallen to sleep on the floor sometime in the early morning hours. Even if the exhaustion sunk deep, fear overpowered sleep deprivation. He needed answers and not the kind that leads to more questions. The definitive kind, he needed something factual, solid. Something like _‘Yes, John, you are losing your mind._ ’ Something to that effect would be fine too.

He grumpily got up, ready to start Mrs. Hamilton’s day. Outside his bedroom, the house smells like gingerbread and he can hear muffled laughter. The daylight has a brittle quality to it as if it could break apart to reveal the night at any moment. Silver slowly descended the stairs and stood in front of the large windows to the garden terrace before entering the bright kitchen. He can hear Flint’s voice softly speaking to Mrs. Hamilton and Silver stands there feeling a small smile begin to grow on his face. The grumpiness seems to evaporate. Despite the fact, he may be losing his mind.

Something smacks the window beside Silver. He jumps, startling back. There’s a crack right at Silver’s height by the two large doors leading out to the terrace, right in his path. Flint steps into the room on a breath, surprised to find Silver standing there and examines the cracked window with caution. “What happened?” Flint questions and Silver shrugs in bewilderment.

He thought it may have been a bird but it wasn’t. Outside, they find the stone that did it, resting on the concrete surrounded by small shards. Someone had thrown it, deliberately. A knowing fury boils beneath Flint’s features as if something dawned on him. Silver has never seen him appear this angry before. He grabs his coat from the foyer and stalks back outside, down the steps. “I’ll be back by dinner,” Flint calls back before heading towards the forest.

“Dinner?” Silver replies and it goes unanswered. Dinner is hours away.

Silver picks up the stone and twists it in his palm. It seems to be an ordinary stone retrieved from anywhere but there’s something chiseled into it in small jagged writing, it reads: _‘Hold with the hare’_

That familiar dread he’s fast growing accustomed to fills his senses. Silver glances up towards the wild forest to see that Flint has disappeared already into the trees. He walks back inside to find Mrs. Hamilton resting her chin in her hand with worry in her eyes.

“What does this mean?” Silver asks and sets the stone in front of her.

She grabs it from the table, turning it calmly in her fingers. She softly touches the chiseled words. “Hold with the hare and run with the hounds. It means someone who takes a stance against something but goes on to do that exact thing.”

“Like a hypocrite?” Silver asks.

She nods tiredly, closing her eyes. He needs to stop pushing but why was it written on a stone that was thrown at the house? Why was it written on a record inside one of Flint’s books?

Who was Jack Rackham and why did he want Silver to leave? What happened to Eleanor? What happened to Thomas? What is this family? This house?

_Who was he?_

The question surprises him and it put the others screaming in his head to rest. He knows who he is, didn't he? He's  _no one_ , belonging to nothing.

He helps Mrs. Hamilton to bed and as he moving to stand from her bedside, she sets her hand on his cheek, softly and he stays rooted to the spot. “It’ll be all right.” She whispers. He watches her kind face for a moment and he gives her a small smile. He wonders if she’s lying.

He sits in her room for a while after she falls to sleep in its quiet calm. He looks at the dusk-colored paintings around the room and wonders if Eleanor painted any of them. They didn’t possess the same aloneness as the painting in the foyer did. He thinks on how alive this house must have been once, when it was very much lived in.

\--

Silver found that pretending to know how to cook worked some of the time. In truth, he is terrible at it but Mrs. Hamilton didn’t seem to mind a few burnt edges here and there. He starts a simple pasta dish for dinner, something he can’t possibly destroy.

As Flint had said, he comes back from the forest when dinner is about finished as if on cue. There are leaves in his hair. They looked like they belonged there, like he’s a part of the woods too. He doesn’t speak a word, even if he did nod at Silver in acknowledgement. The crack in the window seemed to be…healing. It isn’t as big as it was this morning and that fact should unnerve Silver, shouldn’t it? Shouldn’t he be running down the drive, halfway to his car by now?

Mrs. Hamilton wasn’t up for eating dinner. It’s just the two of them at the small table in the kitchen, overlooking the darkening garden out back. It’s raining again and small droplets collected along the windows, smearing the view like a watercolor painting. The sound of their utensils scraping their plates fills the silence.

Flint stops for a moment, drawing Silver’s eyes to his and says, “This is good, thank you.”

“I’m not the best cook but it’s something. You’re welcome.” Silver says, truthfully and fiddles with his fork. He isn’t that hungry.

Flint stills and his brow crinkles in thought. Silver can tell he’s about to reach into the past. “Mrs. Hamilton used to take in foster children. I was one of those children, as was Eleanor. Thomas being her only biological child.”

Silver waits a moment before speaking. The atmosphere is comfortable enough, if a bit melancholy. He hadn’t realized how dark it was outside. He could only see their reflections in the window looking back from the void. Silver wanted to lie as he usually did and say that he was an orphan himself once, give him the usual back story. He could have said it and perhaps it would have brought them closer or Flint would have seen through the lie. Instead, he keeps the topic on Flint, where it should be.

“You grew up here then?” Silver asks and Flint nods, amenable to new questions.

“I know what you’re thinking and the answer is yes, it has always been this odd.” Flint says with slight amusement.

Silver pulls out the small note from his pocket he received from the crow and pushes it towards Flint across the table. Flint sets down his fork curiously and takes it, skimming it with his eyes.

“How many caregivers have you gone through before me? Be honest.” Silver asks, trying to make light of the situation. Flint doesn’t smile though. He sets the paper down and looks back at Silver with an openness he wasn’t expecting.

“None.” Flint says and moves his eyes towards their reflections. “Things are as they should be.”

Silver huffs, “And what does that mean?” 

“Charles Vane sent you that note.” Flint adds, putting them back on topic and points to it on the table.

“Who is Charles Vane?”

Flint looks sincere and thoughtful but the way he says it gives away the history behind it, “He thinks those woods belong to him but those woods belong to no one. We…belong to no one.”

“This man lives in the woods and wants your property?” Silver tries to fit logic into this somehow and he hoped something, _anything_ would make sense. Flint barks out a laugh at that and his smile grows. It seemed to amuse him greatly, whereas Silver remained confused.

“I wish it were that simple. I really do.” Flint says, still smiling and it’s a rare pleasant sight.

“Then explain it to me because I really haven’t the slightest idea.” Silver replies, adding a smile of his own. Flint looks at him again, the smile fading but lingering a little while longer. “Ask me something else.” He looks comfortable, ready to sit here for a long time yet. Silver found a rush in that. Flint is starting to let loose those thoughts of his. Those thoughts that Silver has wanted to grab at since he first met him in the foyer. Why? He doesn’t know. There are things he should know but doesn’t and it leaves spaces in his life where there shouldn’t be. Silver knows his question is a bold one and he knows it will cease the smiles. He tries to word it politely, “What…happened to them? To Thomas and Eleanor?”

Flint leans back, the smile fading completely as he suspected it would. He’s preparing the words as his eyes catch Silver’s again. He understands the loneliness he finds there, he matches it with his own. There is grief and undeniable turmoil that still rests in James Flint’s heart.

“Thomas…” Flint stops and then blinks, breaking eye contact. “He went missing for a time. I remember looking….searching everywhere through those woods…”

Flint looks so very far away, and Silver doesn’t dare interrupt it. He waits patiently for him to continue. The rain grows heavier outside; smacking the window through the dark.

“We found him not long after that at the foot of the mountain. They _said_ it was from exposure to the cold.” He says it as if he doesn’t quite believe it and there’s an open bitterness there beneath his eyes.  

“I’m so sorry. I really am.” Silver concedes, quietly. It’s fairly evident that Thomas and Flint were exceptionally close and the loss of that connection had changed everything.

Nothing else is said on the subject that night. Flint helps Silver clean up the dishes in silence and they say their quiet goodnights.

\--

That night Silver spent it on the couch in the sitting room reading one of the books he grabbed from Flint’s library upstairs. He turned the pages until the words blurred and the soft sound of rain outside sung him to sleep. The plan had originally been to stay awake the whole night and jump at shadows but his body had other ideas.

He dreamt of Flint that night.

He had been standing above him in a shadowed blur and he said, “You have to come with me.” The moonlight agreed, it left a pathway. He looks like a figment; imagined. He held out his hand to Silver through the dark. Flint’s hand was ice cold when their palms met, like he had stuck his fist deep into the soil. A dark unease pooled like a weight between his ribs. They went out the back door, down the concrete steps towards the ravaged weed filled garden, down the clearing with the tree swing and then Flint pointed back at the house with certain awe. It was collapsing in on itself with green vines. The vines were cracking up the gutters, like snakes. It was so green, real green, from real wilderness. It was like something from a time before people, something of the old.

A brilliant smile breaks out across Flint’s face, “Look.” He says. “It’s—"

Silver jolts awake, his entire body alight, his hair plastered to his neck with sweat. He suddenly has the jarring realization that Flint is actually standing beside the couch in the approaching dawn. He looks wide-eyed in the shadow, like a spooked animal. Silver squints and blinks to keep his eyes open. There’s a soft small sky-blue blanket over him which he didn’t remember having. In fact, he didn’t have any blankets at all. The book he had fallen to sleep reading is resting on the table.

“I…” Flint begins, awkwardly and looks to the doorway. “I read in here when I can’t sleep. I didn’t expect to find you in here. I apologize if I woke you.”

Silver sits up from the couch, catching the strip of moonlight across his eyes from a curtain that had fallen open. “Do you ever sleep?” Silver asks and the tension eases a little. Flint shakes his head. “It’s a rare thing. I’ll leave you.” Flint says with a nod and Silver interrupts without embarrassment, “I dreamt about you.”

Flint stops in his tracks, his back rigid. “Is that so?”

“You guided me out of the house. You wanted me to view it from the garden but when I saw it, it was…wild, abandoned, eaten away by the earth. You were happy about it.”

Flint turns to face him again and he watches him curiously. “Why do you think I was happy?”

“I have no fucking idea.” Silver says with a small laugh. A hint of a smile forms on Flint’s lips and Silver adds, “But what I do know is that this place, this reality, makes as much sense as that dream did. I know I have no right to ask but what the hell is happening here?”

Silver thought about leaving. He thought about quitting, just like that. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, would it? If he quit out right he’d find a new job. He’d go home for a bit, move into a new place, and learn a new routine. People move on from parts of their lives every day. Why does he stay? Mrs. Hamilton isn’t the whole reason. It’s not that he made a commitment. It’s not the money. It’s not a sense of pride. He’s not ashamed to give up. So, what is it? Why can’t he leave? It’s as if he’s forgotten something. What did he forget?

Flint sits down on the far end of the couch he’s on and sends his thoughts back into their inconceivable depths. “You must understand. This isn’t something that can be explained in one sitting. It’s not something we can discuss over breakfast and go about our day. The truth must be presented gradually.”  

That statement does nothing to quell his growing discomfort. “I thought about leaving. I thought about what that would do and I know I made a commitment to Mrs. Hamilton, to you but this place…it’s dark, it’s…there’s something _seriously_ wrong here.”

Flint looks at him through the shadows at the far end of the couch. It felt as though he’s slowly growing further away, as if they’re in a tunnel.

“Take some time to think on it. I’d understand if you wanted to leave. This house isn’t easy to get to know.” Flint stops on a breath, watching him, “Mrs. Hamilton and I do enjoy your company. It’s been nice having someone here. It’s not so quiet anymore.”

Silver’s heart sped up and he knew deep down the thought of escape is an illusion. The truth of it though was that he knew Flint knew it too. It’s easy to offer someone a way out when you know they have no intention of taking it. He had called his bluff and the decision would always be to stay.


	5. Lucky

It’s been a strange shapeless length of days.  The length of which Silver has been in this house isn’t known to him.

“John…will you do me a favor?” Mrs. Hamilton points towards the garden down the steps, “Pick me some hydrangeas, I want to put them in my vase.”

It looked different than it did in his dream. In his dream, everything was torn, wild and unyielding. Now, the garden looked pristine and colorful comparatively. It’s holding itself back; keeping the vines away. He spots a perfect ring of mushrooms beneath the old rope swing. They’re tall and thin like specters. He traipses over the soil to admire them. He hadn’t noticed them before. It’s as if they are heralding the new day. He steps back, accidentally crushing a stray one with his shoe. When he moves his foot, he notices the crushed mushroom appeared to be bleeding into the dirt. The sight set him back and he bends to exam it. Dark red liquid seeped from the crown and the pearly white color is slowly shriveling; dying. “Shit…” Silver breathes.

After retrieving Mrs. Hamilton’s hydrangeas, Silver sat on the steps facing the garden and he stares at that ring of mushrooms, now barely visible.

“How are we today?” He hears from Flint’s voice behind him. Silver wants to turn around and ask him why his mushrooms bleed.

“John picked me some hydrangeas.” Mrs. Hamilton says, happily.

Does she _know_? She must know.

“Mr. Silver?” Flint asks from behind him, he’s closer now.

“I’m greeting the sun. There aren’t many clear days here.” Silver says and the creeping disquiet remains unabated.  

“Enjoy it while it lasts.” Flint states and he retreats inside the house. Silver knew he didn’t mean for it to sound ominous but it did.

He stands not a moment later, glancing to see that Mrs. Hamilton is still enjoying her tea. Silver walks into the small sitting room facing the garden windows. There’s a ticking clock, pronouncing his footsteps. Flint is putting books away in small dusty shelves.

Silver announces, bluntly, “I want to understand this house. I want to understand you.”

Flint stills his movements, abandoning whatever it is he’s doing and stands up, turning to face him. The great distance remains between them. This house is so big that the empty spaces seem to stretch into forever. The clock ticks louder and Flint closes that distance. He’s now the closest he’s ever been to Silver. From such a view, Silver can see the ghost of freckles across the bridge of Flint’s nose in the muted sunlight. His eyes track his and when he speaks, he speaks quietly as so only Silver can hear it. “Mrs. Hamilton loves this house, more than I could ever convey to you. People don’t love like that anymore. No one loves each other like that anymore. It will either resent you or protect you. And you need its protection, Mr. Silver, listen to me…” He takes a sharp breath but pauses, studying Silver’s face as if the thought had died before it left his throat.

Flint looks dreamt up, like some cruel trick and Silver is finding it hard to maintain some semblance of control. He reaches out and touches Flint’s shoulder but the static electricity shocks them both. He doesn’t really know why he needed to touch him. He thinks he needed to ground himself. He needed to know that Flint is really in front of him, that he wasn’t still sleeping somewhere, somewhere cold and dark.

“What do I need its protection from?”

Flint swallows and says, “Years ago, I heard a scream outside but it wasn’t a scream any human made. It was an animal and I thought it was injured. I ran down the stairs, late at night to the garden. I saw a fox in the bright-dark beneath the moon but it wasn’t a fox, it was a trick. It was something pretending to be a fox. Eleanor was there, lying in the grass, quiet and still. I reached out to her and it snapped at me, scraping my hand with its teeth. Then it disappeared back into whatever night it crawled out from. It left me with my fingertips bleeding into the earth and Eleanor…I thought she was dead. I thought it had killed her but she was sleeping, she was breathing.”

Silver doesn’t really know what to say or think at this point. The only thing that steadies him and keeps him in the moment is the eye contact they share. “What happened to her?”

Flint immediately continues as if he waited on Silver’s behalf, “Eleanor was in a comatose state for a time after that and then she disappeared one night from her bed. I never saw her again.”

They’re silent for a while, his thoughts tangling like the branches outside.

“I…that’s terrifying. I’m truly sorry.” Silver replies and he feels like all he’s been doing is apologizing for tragedies that aren’t his own. Yet, he felt the burden of it all the same. He found he wanted to share that weight with James Flint. He felt that instinct so strongly that it left him reeling and he felt like he could collapse backwards into the house itself.

“Do you need to sit down?” Flint asks with concern and they are still so close.

“No.”

“All the color has gone from your face,” Flint replies and moves away sitting down on the couch himself.  Silver remains standing until his legs threaten to wobble beneath him and he joins Flint on the stiff cushions. They’re close again, closer than would be necessary for two people having a quiet conversation. It would be up to Silver to grant them more room but he doesn’t. Flint doesn’t seem to mind or notice this.

“I loved him…Thomas.” Flint says and the clock chimes, startling Silver but he didn't let it draw his eyes away. “I thought so.” He says, gently.

“He thought he could reason with the woods, he thought he could get Eleanor back.” Flint draws in a breath and his voice wavers, “I lost him instead.”

Silver tried to think of another apology to voice that didn’t sound like all the rest, when Flint turns to him with sudden mania and grabs his shoulders, surprising him.

“We are all gatekeepers, Mr. Silver.” He proclaims. He’s so close with his green eyes roving over Silver’s features in such vivid desperation and Silver can feel his breath on his face. The warmth of his palms seep through the fabric of his shirt. It’s all too much.

“Tell me how I can help you.” Silver says, sincerely. He meant it. He just needed to know how to banish some of this misery that has its grip so tightly on this house. There’s a glimmer of released vulnerability. Flint is bunching up his shirt now. This man in front of him has so much anguish inside him. Flint leans in and Silver is about to welcome the shared burden without care for the consequences but Flint stops himself. Their lips barely brush and Flint pulls back as if he’s snapping from a trance. He stands up immediately, pressing his hand to his mouth as if such a small touch burned him.

“James..” Silver says and stands from the couch. Flint storms from the room and up the stairs. Silver is left staring at the empty space he left behind.

“John…” Mrs. Hamilton calls from outside and Silver releases a shaky breath.

\--

He helps Mrs. Hamilton to bed as he usually did and she smiles warmly at him, her tired eyes meeting his. She points to the drawer in the nightstand and says, “There’s a picture there I want you to see.”

Silver squints and gives her a kind smile. He pulls open the small drawer and spots the small framed photo inside. He lifts it to reveal a younger, happier Flint with a smile to match the bright day in the photo. Beside him is who Silver suspects is Thomas, his blonde hair shining in the sun, just as happy as Flint was.

“They looked content.”

She takes the picture from him to examine it carefully. “It’s the only picture I have of him.”

Silver furrows his brow, “Why’s that?”

“The others disappeared or were taken.” She says and sets the picture to her chest tightly as if she’s afraid that one would be snatched away as well.

Silver’s perplexed, “By who and why?”

She says it ever so softly before she drifts into slumber, “The king in the labyrinth.”

Silver is struck with such immediate unease he has to step back from the bed. He watches Mrs. Hamilton sleeping so peacefully, hugging that picture of the perfect day. He recognized those words _‘The king in the labyrinth’_ it was the title of one of Flint’s books.

He leaves the room, shutting the door quietly and walks down the darkened silent hallway to enter the library. He scourers the books on the few shelves he passes and spots the title etched in red writing. It’s the first book in the series. He opens the cover and begins to flip through the pages when he notices with confusion that they're blank. He drops it to the floor and grabs another copy from the shelf. This one is also filled with blank pages. “What the hell?” He whispers aloud. The lights flicker as he grabs the next one. It too is eerily blank. He sits there on the floor with the copies collapsed in front of him, staring at the matching title of each. A floorboard creaks in the doorway to the library and it catches Silver’s attention. No one is there but it’s as if someone just was as if his gaze had just missed them.

“James?” He asks the quiet that doesn’t answer back. Silver takes a deep calming breath before grabbing one of the blank books and peering out into the hall. All appeared normal. There are no sinister shadows lurking where they shouldn’t be.

He walks to the end of the hallway and stands in front of Flint’s closed door. He wanted an explanation as to why the books were blank. That perhaps maybe there was something plausible for once. He lifts his fist to knock but thinks better of it, lowering his hand. He stood there silently staring at the carved wood of the door in awkward trepidation. He thinks on the events from earlier and how he suspects Flint didn't want to be disturbed, especially by him. After a moment, Silver sighs and walks to his room instead.

Once inside, he set the book on his nightstand and slumped on the bed, biting his cheek in contemplation. He didn’t bother getting under the covers or undressed. He just laid back on the puffy pillows, avoiding the carved eye above him. He had seriously considered taping a piece of paper over it at one point. Eleanor’s room, the room he’s staying in, is one of the few rooms that _didn’t_ have paintings in it. Which Silver found odd since Eleanor was a painter herself. He thinks on her fate of all things and the story Flint had told him.

_and then she disappeared one night from her bed. I never saw her again._

Silver sits up quick and stares at the bed as if it could devour him. He flips the light on, and he squints against it having adjusted to the dark. He bends down and peers under the bed feeling like a fool. Of course, there is nothing under there but dust and…

He tilts his head and grabs his phone to use as a flashlight. There at the back, against the wall, and beneath the headboard is a small indention that looked like a button or switch of some sort. Unable to reach it or exam it from here, he forces himself beneath the bed. He catches a strand of torn cobwebs in his hair and he has to blow it from his face to be able to see. The motion sends the dust forward and he coughs against the assault. Holding his phone, he crawls forward towards the indention.

It is a button, that much is clear but he had absolutely no idea what it would be to and that thought is beyond terrifying. He hovers over it, covered in dust and cobwebs like a madman. It’s the room he’s staying in after all, shouldn’t he know what’s in it? He holds his finger over it, hesitantly, his breath caught in his throat. He could pretend that he was being foolish about this whole thing but since when is anything in this house not significant somehow? He squints, preparing for anything as he’s about to press it when there’s a loud banging at his door. He jumps and smacks his head against the bottom of the bed. It elicits a yelp and the jarring pain of it rings in his ears. The panicked banging continues and he quickly squeezes out from under the bed.

Moonlight spilled into the room from between the curtains. Silver stumbles and flings his door open. On the other side is a panicked Flint, his hair a mess and his eyes filled with terror.

“What’s happened?” Silver asks, quickly.

“It’s Mrs. Hamilton.”  

\--

Flint said he spotted her from out of his window, heading into the garden in her nightgown and by the time he had reached her she was lying unresponsive in the dirt.

Silver follows the panicked trail of Flint out and down the steps below this clear night. When Silver sees her lying there, he thought she was dead. She looks so still. Flint’s hands are shaking and he’s kneeling beside her. There are rose vines growing over her ankles in loops, thick with thorns. Her legs are bleeding into the ground like the mushroom did. “What the fuck happened?” Silver exclaimed. She’s so frail. She’s so small. “I don’t know.” Flint kept repeating, quietly. He had his phone out and began to dial for emergency as Mrs. Hamilton opened her eyes.

\--

She couldn’t speak. She was shivering as they trimmed and ripped the invading vines from her. By the time they were able to both carry her back to the house, the ambulance arrived out front. It’s so foggy that the flashing lights created ghostly red and blue patterns along the gravel drive.

Silver stood on the cusp of it. The line of this property to the street as if he’s between two worlds. The pull of the house is like a painful magnet behind him, calling him home. How long had it been since he’s left this house? It felt like years. He had thought that the house wouldn’t let him or that the world out there had ceased to exist somehow, but he followed the ambulance with his car through the fog. However, no matter how far he drove from it, its grip remained.

They said she had hypothermia and that she was lucky. The doctors kept saying that to Flint, _‘She’s so lucky’_


	6. Offering

There’s a hollowed tunnel and a stone circle over Silver’s head. Torches are in rusted brackets against the walls. The flames reach towards him as he passes, like warnings. Everything is black and red. Everything is flickering. There are bones under his feet and they crunch as he walks.

He walks and walks until he comes to a junction where three tunnels are laid out in a fork ahead of him. The tunnel on the left is marked by a sign that read: The Deep Dark, the tunnel on the right read: Fear of Time and the tunnel in the middle read: The Cold Hillside.

He stood there for an eternity, listening to the whispering flame. He hears from an unfamiliar voice behind him, “ _If this house is a heart, you’re the hook through it.”_

\--

He wakes slowly, blinking up at the tall ceiling above, resting in shadow. Silver fell asleep on the couch while waiting for Flint to arrive home from the hospital. As of now, he’s alone inside the house.

It’s impossible to see anything outside, the fog is so thick and ghostly. Silver can hardly make out the trees. Everything feels muted and heavy. What date is it? What month? How did he forget these things? His phone tells him it’s October but it’s still summer. He can’t even remember what day he began work here. He worries that the world beyond the fog doesn’t exist or is altered in some terrible way. It’s unbelievably isolating.

Silver drifts through the second-floor hallway, running his hand along the wall. He’s disconnected like a walking spinal column. What’s happening to him? The house already has its claws in his skin and he didn’t want to escape it any longer.

All the clocks have stopped, there is no more ticking, no chimes. They all read 7:07. He tries to examine the grandfather clock in the hall but it won’t budge, it’s stuck. He curses and throws something at it in frustration. He’s trapped, isn’t he? He did this to himself.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

It came from door to the garden and Silver doesn’t want to look but he has to.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

It wasn’t the crow this time. He slowly approaches the glass, such a thin barrier to keep monsters at bay. There, outside the door is a fox. Its fur is the color of kindled fire. It’s staring at him still and obedient with yellow eyes. It’s the crow, isn’t it? They are the same.

He remembers Flint’s story about the fox and how it lured him outside to hurt him. Silver is paralyzed with terror in the quiet room. Its eyes never leaving his. It’s waiting to be let in.

“What do you want?” Silver asks and it’s so loud in the silence. Such a thin barrier, glass, so easily broken, so easily destroyed.

It stands from where it was sitting. It moves towards the stairs that lead to the garden and waits. The fox wants him to follow it, he wants him to come with him into those deep woods.

“I’m not leaving. I know what you are. You’re a trick.” Silver says to the glass. He thinks it smiles, it looks like it is. It lifts it’s pointed head towards the sky before disappearing into the thick fog.

There’s a thud from the third floor, like shoes, like someone had jumped just once. Silver grabs the dusty poker from the fireplace; seemingly to be his weapon of choice as of late. He waits at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at the third floor. The floorboards creak as if someone is still there, just out of sight.

A book suddenly drops from the balcony of the third-floor stairs and smacks the ground in front of him. He startles back a few steps and eyes it, his grip growing tighter on the poker. “Who are you?” He chances.

And a voice answers back, the voice from his dream, “My name is Billy, I came from the mountain and that is my offering to you.”

To _him_? Silver looks back towards the leather-bound book that resembled a journal.

“Where the fuck did you come from and why the hell are you in this house?!” Silver yells and it echoes up and into the wooden beams.

Was Billy the fox? The crow? How is that possible?

Only silence answers back. He waits for a tell-tale creak but there’s nothing. It’s as if he was never there, to begin with.

“Hello?” He calls and turns back to peer out the back door which is still encapsulated by fog. There are no foxes, crows, or Billy’s to be seen or heard. He’s alone.

Silver approaches the old journal, cautiously as if it could devour him. Maybe it could if he wasn’t careful. He’s learned not to rule anything out here. The poker is still in his hand as he leans down and picks it up. The leather feels smooth, like stained skin. Human skin? He decides he doesn’t want to know.

 _My offering to you._ He had said.

He sits down on the couch in the sitting room with the silent clock and rests the poker beside him on the cushion. He lifts the cover to be greeted with drawings. There’s a sketch of a fox eating something, its mouth bloodied and a symbol of some kind that Silver couldn’t tell the meaning of if his life depended on it. There are recipes written in a messy scrawl. It resembled something a witch of the woods would have in her library. A quail egg and the fat of rodent are required to make ‘ _soup of the goat’_ but no goat is required apparently.  The tail of an outcast and a twig of the groundhog birch are required to make _‘The Gibbons of Spring’_ whatever the fuck that is. The next page is a drawing that resembled a trap to catch insects in.  There’s a sketch of beetle with its wings expanded and written below is: _How to rot a dream._ Silver sighs and flips through the next few pages that resembled concoctions of the same abstract meanings. Written in the margin on one of the pages he flips through, barely visible, is _‘There’s a vine growing in my heart, I cannot tear it free. Soon I will be eaten from the inside’_

There’s another page and the scrawl is cut with such ferocity that it almost tore the page in two _‘Darkness of Darkness.’_  Several pages after that suffer the wound it left behind.

The next page is an actual entry. _‘I found the new king. I watched you through reflections, a pool and a mirror, a pond and glass. I knew it when I saw you. The one with eyes made of the sky. I made you this to commiserate you. To welcome you to the labyrinth. It lies beneath the mountain and it's yours. I can see it in the dark water of the lake. I can see you taking it with your teeth. New king, my king.’_

The entry unsettled him greatly, even more so than the odd violent sketches. This didn’t feel much like he was uncovering a mystery at all. This felt like the beginning of something. It terrified him so deeply that he closed the journal immediately.

The front door bursts open. Silver’s heart almost leaps out of his chest and he hears from the foyer, “That damned fog. I can’t see a breath in front of me.”

_Flint._

The relief Silver feels is unmatched. He hadn’t even been alone long in this house. How did Flint and Mrs. Hamilton endure it? How did they survive so alone here?  

“Mr. Silver.” The voice that warms his chest calls and Silver stands from the couch, leaving the journal there. He walks to the doorway and leans on the wall, observing Flint remove his dark coat and hanging it on the hook.

“How is Mrs. Hamilton?” Silver asks, trying to school his fear.

Flint looks up at him, eyes roaming over his torso and shoulders as if to check if he’s safe without asking. “I spoke with her for a while and they want to keep her under observation.”

Silver nods, “I’m glad she’s okay.”

“As am I. I’m starved,” Flint replies and walks by Silver in a flurry towards the kitchen. Silver follows after him and watches as he searches through the fridge. “Have the clocks stopped?” He asks.

“Yes…I don’t...do you know why they stopped?” Silver questions and Flint pulls out a chicken leg from the left-over dinner. He chews for a moment before his eyes find Silver’s again. “It happens sometimes when the fog rolls in.”

He says it like it's normal and Silver somehow finds comfort in that.

“I saw the fox.” Silver blurts out and Flint stops eating. He just stares at Silver and tilts his chin before throwing the chicken away.

“What? When?”

“It was sitting by the back door, watching me and…someone was on the third floor. They gave me a journal.”

“They walked through this house and gave you a journal?” Flint asks, appearing terrified. Something in the air had shifted from comforting to that static eerie awareness. The awareness of the house and the things inside it.

“No, they dropped it from the third floor. He said his name was Billy.” Silver adds and Flint looks a little less terrified at that but the apprehension remained.

“Where is the journal?” Flint asks, darkly commanding.

“In the sitting room.”  Flint immediately leaves the room and Silver follow, “it had recipes inside it and spells? There were strange entries about a new king.”

Flint appears frantic, throwing firewood into the fireplace, and striking a match. He sets it to the wood and watches it birth the flames. They sit there in nervous silence, the only sound the crackling. The popping, the collapsing of wood.

“Where is it?” Flint asks, searching the room with his eyes and Silver grabs it from the couch handing it to him. Flint didn’t bother with it, didn’t hesitate, didn’t attempt to open it. He just tosses it into the flames and they both stand there watching it being eaten away. It sizzles with what sounded like muted screams. “Can you…maybe explain this to me at least?” Silver tries.

“Billy Bones is a trickster, don’t listen to his lies,” Flint replies.

“He said it was an offering to me but why me?”

Flint slumps down onto the couch, shutting his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose before letting out an exhausted huff. Silver joins him, giving him more space than the last time they shared a couch. Flint blinks and turns to Silver, leaving his arm to rest on the back of the cushion, “They want to be rid of me and they will do whatever is necessary.”

“ _They_?”

“The people of the wood, the followers of the fae.”

Silver speaks slowly in confusion, “The followers of the…fae?” He felt like an idiot repeating everything in question form but it’s the only words he can form any coherency in.

“They worship old gods of the woods. This house acts as a barrier, protection and a gateway from those woods to the world out there.” He points in the direction of the garden and then to the front door.  

As insane as all of this sounded it made a sort of sense to Silver. The house acting as the in-between of two worlds. A conduit. He was taking it considerably well.

“Jesus…this is…I’ve lost my mind, haven’t I?” Silver asks and he smiles of all things. He found comfort when Flint granted him a tired smile back that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Don’t trust anyone unless I say they are to be trusted, you understand?” Flint asks, the smile vanishing as quickly as it arrived. Silver feels shaky and drained as if he could collapse and sleep for years. He'd wake up to ash and bone.

“I understand. Why do they want to get rid of you?” Silver knew that Flint is exhausted, and rightfully so but he pushes anyway.

“This place keeps the wolves from devouring the world.” Flint states and stands, promptly leaving Silver to his maelstrom of thoughts.


	7. The Bull

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The middle of this chapter is hideously romantic :P

He pulled flowers from his teeth, crushed and raw. He spits them in a cup. He can still taste the mud and leaves. His tongue is black and stained from it. He pricks his finger, dripping it onto the smashed carcasses of the flowers.

Billy Bones is dutiful, always dutiful. His loyalty is to the dark not to the imposter. The imposter that crawls in the maze now. The bull and monster he pretended to be, no. He has found another that terror fell for. John Silver may be all new eyes and fresh skin now but he recognizes the bull, the horns hidden. An image created from that abomination. That house.

When Billy was a boy he’d hide in the cinnamon fern and laugh at things that weren’t there. He’d conjure them out of nothing, friends, and foes. He’d grip the mud like skin and pull it apart. He’d go on journeys with those friends, sail far and wide across the waking sea. He knew those adventures were never real nor does he go on them anymore. He grew up; grew to hate.

He drips honey into the cup to flavor it, makes it taste better on the way down. He cracks apart roots, shaking the soil free and tastes one before using a twig to stir. They were mud; the old earth. A black spider crawls up his arm and into the cup, a willing participant.

Abigail used to put flowers in his beard before their gods took her. He’s kept the journal she used to write in. She was his little sister by the moon.

He presses his bare feet into the bed of leaves beneath him and tosses a handful of dirt towards the entrance of the cave he was occupying.

He removes the mixture from the cup and fits it in a small dirty glass vial.  He puts it in his leather pouch and grabs the mask made of twigs, slipping it over his face.

\--

Silver found he enjoyed watching Flint garden. Flint himself didn’t know this since Silver observes from the window from the kitchen but it’s like he’s gazing into somewhere else. Somewhere far off, like watching a memory play out for him. He handles the plants with such delicacy and he suspects the plants appreciate the gesture, more so here than anywhere else.

He starts dinner and pleads with the dish to corporate because it felt important. Out of the many meals he’s prepared for Mrs. Hamilton and Flint, this one felt like a turning point. He hopes chicken and potatoes would suffice for this hidden occasion.

He had found out earlier that the button beneath his bed does do something after all, even though it wasn’t as exciting as he imagined. It opened one of the bookcases in the room, sadly not to a secret passage but to an indention in the wall, where someone might be able to hide something. He suspects Eleanor hid things there. He doesn’t know why but he suspects she’s the type to hide things. He didn’t find anything there but an old brooch resembling the sea.  He kept it, putting it neatly in his bedside table.

Flint comes back inside, a smear of soil on his neck and sweat glistening on his temples. He has a bundle of lilies that he sets on the counter in front of Silver quietly. The blatant unspoken gesture doesn’t go unnoticed. Silver knew those flowers were meant for him and he doesn’t stop the smile from growing on his face as he reaches for a glass to put them in.

He sets them on the table in front of the window overlooking the garden. Flint appears contemplative while facing the window with his hands clasped behind his back. It’s going to rain soon, the dark clouds have claimed the sky and with it the little light of day left. Silver sets the food on the table, steam rising above the fresh lilies. He could ask him another question out of the many that are floating around his skull. One being what had happened to Mrs. Hamilton, what had caused it but that’s a dark road he didn’t wish to travel down in this moment.

“Do you have a favorite?” Silver asks instead as he sits down. Flint joins him a moment later, collecting his thoughts and giving Silver his undivided attention.  “Favorite?”

“Favorite flower in your garden or do you treat your children all equally?” Silver grins as he cuts into the chicken hoping it won’t be too dry.

Flint begins eating, seemingly enjoying the food and he replies, “Lily of the valley.”

The rain patters comfortingly outside, the fog has now completely gone. He can see the dark forest and the mountain draped in a gray veil. “Aren’t those poisonous?”

“They are and I always thought they seemed like such sad little flowers despite what others may believe.”

“Any other poisonous plants in the garden you’re cultivating?”

“Besides the ones I picked for you?” Flint says, eyeing the Calla lilies on the table. The words warm Silver’s chest at how casually they are spoken. He continues, “There is wolfsbane near the edge of the woods, which always looks so terrifyingly inviting from afar. I think it’s an appropriate place to grow it.” His tone is bitter but there’s a hint of a smile behind his eyes. Flint had a deep hatred for those woods and whatever resides within them. It's a hatred born over time.

They finish dinner silently but it’s the comfortable sort of silence where lingering gazes are exchanged that mean many things all at once.

\--

The fire crackles after the rain had ended and Silver sits in front of it entranced by the flames. He pulls images from it, images he’s not sure are memories. He hears Flint enter the room and is pleased when he decides to sit next to him on the floor as opposed to the couch behind them. “What do you see?” Flint asks pointing to the flames.

“Images I’m not sure are my own.” Silver says truthfully. The firelight darkens Flint’s eyes to dangerous shadows which has Silver studying his face more openly than he had intended. Flint notices and doesn’t shy away from the scrutiny. He meets it head on, returning the observation. His eyes trace Silver’s neck to his jawline in the glow. “I wonder how such a thing is possible,” Flint says, softly.

“What is that?”

“You. How you walked into this house and you stood in that foyer, soaked from rainwater. You knew me. You looked right at me and you knew me. I’ve never felt so utterly exposed and it happens every time you look at me. I feel transparent to you. Am I so transparent to you?”

Silver chuckles, “No…definitely not. You..” He halts for a moment, his smile fading a little as he watches the glow leave abstract shapes on Flint’s skin. “You’re still very much an enigma.”

Flint smiles warmly before turning to look at the flames. In this moment, more than anything, Silver wanted to press his lips to his. He wanted to tether him to this moment; tether the two of them. He’s afraid of this precious thing, this precious tiny moment in time would soon grow cold like the fire will and Flint will leave. He’d go upstairs and shut his door to be alone again. He’d disappear into himself. Flint turns to Silver again, this time recognizing the likeness. Silver’s chest heaves in indecision when he thinks Flint is moving to stand but instead, he slides closer to Silver. So close that there is no firelight between them. Flint moves gracefully forward, their noses bumping before Silver ghosts his lips over Flint’s. They’re breathing the same air before Flint captures his mouth in his. It’s the most delicate thing Silver has ever experienced. His heart is a drum against his rib cage as Flint moves his hand slowly up his shoulder to his neck, running the side of his thumb along his jawline. Silver parts his lips and the kiss deepens with newfound exigency. He doesn’t want to remember a time before this. Before him. Was there a time before him? It’s irrelevant now. This gatekeeper, grieving in the between, deserves such warmth and reciprocation.

They are lying on the floor now with Flint above him, caressing his lips with his own as if Silver were a thing to be cherished. Time has very little meaning any longer. It didn’t much matter that all the clocks had stopped, they didn’t need them. The kiss is broken on a breath and Flint noses Silver’s neck, running his lips over the soft skin behind his ear. He quietly breathes, “You torment me.” He breaks away from Silver then and stands, holding out his hand to him.

The fire is growing cold as they stumble, like fools out of the sitting room. Following Flint up the stairs, Silver has a brilliant smile that’s threatening to crack apart his face from the pressure of it. Flint doesn’t bother to look behind him, he knew he’s unable to do anything else but follow him. Flint pushes his bedroom door open, inviting him in. He realizes it’s the first time he’s seen Flint’s room. There are tall bookshelves stretching to the ceiling, an old dark wooded desk beside them and the bed is four-post like the one Silver sleeps in, with a dark red quilt. The door clicks as Flint shuts it behind him. The silence in this room is something else entirely as if no other sound exists. There’s open insecurity in Flint’s expression as he cautiously approaches Silver. It’s as if he’s afraid Silver will change his mind and leave him to his loneliness. He’s afraid of it, so much so that Silver can feel it boiling up out of him. He takes Flint’s face between his palms and watches the hesitation banish.

That night Silver consoles him, reminds him and Flint makes him whole. He puts together those uniquely made puzzle pieces one by one with his hands and his mouth.  He pulls secrets out of the breathless dark. James Flint the enigma. James Flint with leaves in hair; made for the woods. James Flint wrapped around him like his very own shell.

\--

Silver doesn’t know what wakes him but he knows something has. Flint is a warm, comfortable weight behind him. His arm wrapped over Silver’s chest, his face buried in the back of Silver’s neck. He’s fast asleep, contented as Silver should be but what woke him? He could just fall back to sleep but he feels strange like something is off. He moves slowly as to not wake Flint and slowly extricates himself from the warmth. He throws some clothes on and opens the door to the hallway a crack. The darkness outside Flint’s door is thick and silent. It had an unwelcoming quality to it as if the air had changed but all seemed normal. Silver closed the door against it, back into the comfort of the bedroom. This is where he should be, he doesn’t understand why he’s out of bed in the first place. He climbs back into bed, into the arms of Flint again and closes his eyes. Whatever it was, it doesn’t matter.

\--

He wakes up again not long after to the soft sound of a door shutting. The warmth behind him is gone. He sits up quick, blinking away his tiredness and notices that Flint isn’t there anymore. He reaches over in the spot he had been and realizes that its cold. How long had it been? He had guessed that Flint had his usual bout of insomnia and maybe went downstairs to read.

That uneasy feeling from earlier comes back to him again though and he hated the way it crawled up inside him, coiled like a snake. He opens the bedroom door a crack again and he sees that the door to the bedroom he had been staying in is eerily wide open. He blinks in confusion and steps out into the dim hallway cautiously. 

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

And Silver’s entire body goes rigid. It came from the window behind him. The curtain is wide open revealing the night and not much else. It isn’t until he walks a little closer, that he notices the reflection. There’s something standing beside him. When Silver turns to his right he sees nothing, but in the glass, there’s something there. It looked almost like a man but he couldn’t quite tell. His breathing is now erratic, he couldn’t move. “What the fuck?” He exclaims, breathlessly. Then it reaches out to him and he feels it; the icy pressure of it against his shoulder. He startled back then, ready to lash out but it’s too late. It grips him, all around him and pulls. He’s forced into the window, only the glass doesn’t break. He falls onto a darkened muddy floor and he’s suddenly covered in it. Something sharp pokes his side beneath him like a bone and he struggles for a moment gaining any awareness of his surroundings. It’s as if he had been pulled into the reflection.

There, standing in front of him is what had pulled him here, into this muddy dark antechamber that smelled of something rotten, something old and forgotten. His eyes trail up the figure who appeared to be dripping with something Silver hopes is mud but it’s too dark to see. The figure is tall, imposing and wearing a mask of twigs.

“You’ll be the bull in the maze.” The figure says and what little light is left in the dank room is shuttered out.

 


	8. Cerberus

James Flint is rage. He’s tearing through the house as if its hidden him somewhere. He stands in front of one of the mirrors on the third floor and wishes he could sever this barrier. This burden. It would most certainly mean the end for him but what has this place given him but misery?

_Where are you?_

He flings the back door open to the damp dew air and glares darkly at the mountain in the distance. Not again. It can’t be this again. He will eviscerate the soil if he has to and he will lay waste to that goddamn forest. Those bone eaters that sleep in mud can’t have _him_. Not him. They’ve taken everything.

“Billy!” He screams to the trees. He knew it was him that took him. It had to have been him. No one else could have been clever enough to make it beyond the barrier on the third floor.

He will set fire to that mountain and watch them burn under their precious moon. He will be the devourer, the monster, they claim he is.

\--

In between that veil of awareness, Silver stirs. Someone far off is whispering in garbled speech. His entire body is filled with the kind of bone-deep chill of being buried in dirt. There’s no light except for above him in a circle like the moon. He’s looking up from inside a well, a dried up well. It reaches high above him. Some of the ancient cobblestone breaks off and crumbles, dusting the ground beside him. He sits up from the pile of spider webs and dead leaves he’s lying on like someone had made him a bed from it. His palms are bloodied from when he fell onto a pile of mushrooms. He can see the smashed dead pile ahead of him.

Silver remembers they had blindfolded him and guided him here through the dark. Hands, cold hands filled with soil had grabbed at him and pulled at his clothing, tore at his hair and smeared his face with their paint that smelled like old musty roots. Silver remembers the man in the twig mask lifting it from his face and revealing himself in the shadow. He remembered his voice and knew his name was Billy. He had a smeared symbol on his cheek, the same symbol he had written in the journal he had offered to Silver. He’ll never forget the look on his face, he looked happy. Happy that Silver was here and that he was their ‘bull in the maze.’ Silver had asked him what that meant and he said: _“You’re here to bestow eternity.”_

Silver just watched him with dread filled terror. He didn’t understand what was happening but whatever this was he didn’t want to be a part of it. He just wanted to be…he wanted to be pondering lilies and setting his cheek to rest on a freckled collarbone. Being away from that house feels like his ribs have been torn loose. He’d never felt anything like it.

A shadow passes above and he immediately looks up to the circle of half-light. There’s a hunched figure resting on the lip of the well looking down at him. There’s a strange whispering still in the muffled background. Silver moves against the wall of the well knocking what looks to be a pelvic bone aside. His hand stills beside it. Bones are scattered all around this place. He remembered stepping on them on the way through the dark. He swallows and his eyes find the figure above again. He hears in a scratchy decaying voice, “Down. Deep dark freed. Share with it your deed.”  

Then the crunching begins, and it sounds like chewing.

“No idea what you just said but I assure you I’m not a bull.” Silver calls. His chest felt as though it could cave in and he’s about to cover his ears to the crunching when it suddenly stops. The small figure slinks away as if frightened. Silver waits, staring above at his only source of light. A taller shadow appears. This one is wearing a crown, a crown of possibly twigs and bone, sewn together. The shadow had long scraggly hair, hanging over his shoulders. Even in the frightening dark, his presence is almost suffocating, menacing, something to be written about but not spoken aloud. He says nothing for a while, he just looks down at Silver. It’s the most unsettling experience. He thinks of what Mrs. Hamilton had said, how the _‘king in the labyrinth’_ took things from her. Was this him?

The sound of shifting rock grabs his attention and an opening is made inside the well; a doorway. Silver scrambles to stand up, grabbing the pelvic bone to defend himself with. He held it tightly in his hand, morbidly thinking on how it belonged to someone once. Billy steps into the room, his face more visible from this angle but he’s unable to discern much from his features under the dirt on his face. Two others enter inside the well, covered in branches and soil. They looked like trees that had transformed into men.

“I think this is a misunderstanding.” Silver says with a nervous huff. “I’m just a caregiver, I work for James Flint to—”

The tree men stalk towards him and Silver reacts defensively as they grab his arms. He cuts one of them across the face with the bone, and the other kicks the back of his legs causing his knees to buckle to the ground. They lift him, dragging him out of the room. He kicks, he punches, he bites but their death grip on him doesn’t falter. They carry him through the dark and it’s the purest pitch. They didn’t even supply him with a blindfold and he doesn’t understand how they could even see ahead of them. “It lies to you,” Billy says from behind him but Silver can’t see him. He can only hear his own breathing, the footsteps, and his heart rushing in his ears. “Cerberus has tricked you.” Billy prattles on.

 _Cerberus?_ Was he speaking about Flint? The guardian to the Underworld? To say all of this is way over John Silver’s head is an understatement.

The tunnel opens to a large empty room with a dirt floor. The size of it startles him, it’s almost like an arena but it’s too dark to see if there are any observers. Silver struggles against the hands that held him but it’s pointless. The dark slowly crawls away from the light revealing more of the room as they near the center. There’s a large hole in the ground, one that only houses a deep kind of dark that Silver has yet to experience in his lifetime. They shove him on his knees in front of the precipice, a literal abyss, and Silver can’t help but stare into it; old sayings be damned. Billy is right behind him, his voice above, “You’re the bull.”

“I’m really not.” Silver says, exhausted, absolutely terrified and hoping still that this is some kind of vivid nightmare. Billy sets his hands on Silver’s shoulders and it makes him jump from the contact. He watches that deep dark and it begins to take shape, but all darkness is like that. His mind creates shapes out of the nothingness, makes it appear as though there are creatures crawling just out of sight. They’re going to throw him into it, aren’t they?

“I’m not who you think I am.” Silver tries, keeping his voice steady. “I’m no one, from nowhere, belonging to nothing.”

Billy’s hands tighten on his shoulders and he replies, “You’re going to bring us home.”

“You’re going to be rather disappointed.” Silver snipes.

Billy continues his cryptic nonsense, “It will willingly let you back into the heart of it.”

“Throwing me down into that dark hole won’t do you any good.”

“You don’t know, do you? Where you came from?” Billy asks, curiously.

Silver’s brows knit together in shaky confusion, “I know what I am and I’m not a bull or the key to anything. I can promise you that.”

Billy’s hands leave his shoulders and he closes his eyes tight as the deafening silence sets in. He’s preparing for it. The inevitable plunge. His chest heaves as his eyes snap open, staring into that black. He thinks of that moment when he first saw Flint’s house as if he were about to plunge into a pit. He went willingly up the gravel drive towards that living breathing thing that was not a house. Is that what they wanted him to do? Jump into the abyss willingly? To see the hole undisguised and open to him is more than enough to plant his knees firmly in the dirt. He’s fine where he is, thank you very much. Something creaks far off into the shadow, like a lever turning. It’s then he notices that the pit appears to be growing wider. The black is consuming the dirt, little by little.  It widens of its own accord and takes the dirt from beneath Silver’s knees. The fall isn’t graceful, he’s tumbling upside down and spinning into blackness with a scream caught in his throat. He manages a few pitiable yells as he reaches for anything that could stop the descent. A random seemingly useless thought tramples his panicked mind. He thinks on Flint’s empty copies of his book of all things. He thinks of the blank pages as if he couldn’t see what was actually there, hidden underneath. Why did that seem so significant? He’s tumbling into the literal unknown and possibly to his death, yet the thought continues to plague him.

His entire body is suddenly enveloped in water and he chokes against the onslaught. He can’t see, he doesn’t even know which way is up. He’s panicking and kicking towards where he thinks the surface may be but it’s just more water. It’s suffocating and freezing. It’s reached inside him and wrapped its self around his throat. There’s nothing to grasp onto, nothing to see, nothing to hear, just the water. Was he sinking? He’s going to drown and as he’s losing consciousness someone or something pulls him up, up, up.

\--

He dreams of claws and a gaping mouth. He dreams of a flood of blood and bone. He can’t escape it. He dreams of standing in the rain again, soaked and staring at that house. It’s always that moment like it’s the moment of his birth, his creation. Why that moment of all moments? Why those blank pages? He can see them falling above him, scattered, so many empty white canvases. Billy’s words echo out to him like a lost song. “ _You don’t know, do you? Where you came from?”_ Those thoughts crescendo into maddening torment.

He’s a man without a history, as blank as those pages.

When he comes to, he can feel solid cold rock beneath him, beneath his palms. He twitches against it. He’s met with pure darkness again when he opens his eyes. He can hear the soft pattering of what sounded like bare feet on stone moving closer to him. Silver instinctively scoots away from it, bumping his head on another rock. Someone is near him, he could feel it and he sets his hand to his forehead with a cringe. “I can’t see a goddamn thing.” Silver says to the dark.

“The light is scarce here.” A soft female voice says.

Silver moves slower this time and sits up, setting his back against the rock. The pure dark moves in front of him but he can’t tell if it’s real or imagined, “Where the hell is this? And who are you?”

He feels a cold hand touch his cheek and he startles away from it. “You’re in the labyrinth beneath the mountain and my name is Eleanor.” She says.

His heart skips like a stone at the mention of her name. “Eleanor?” He exhales.

“Who are you?” She whispers.


	9. Knock Thrice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hadn't planned on this to turn into an epic fantasy novel but here we are lol I hope you'll enjoy the continued journey and thank you to those that have :)

Billy’s feet trample twigs, kicking up the earth as he runs. The smell of smoke and burning wood permeate the woods surrounding the mountain. At first, he believed the entirety of the forest had been set on fire but it wasn’t the case. It was a message.

There, in the clearing is their sacred holly oak tree, which they adorned with beaded jewels and trinkets, burning in a hateful blaze of flame. Others are gathered around it on their knees, covering themselves in soil and weeping towards the sky. Someone calls in anguish, “Was the wicked one who did this!”

Billy makes no move to attempt to save the tree. Let it be a symbol of what they’ve let go ignored, what Charles Vane refused to see. He knows the tree is lost to them. There would be nothing left of it but burnt bark and ash and he knew why.

\--

“John Silver”

“I…” Eleanor begins and then hesitates, “..John Silver?”

Silver wishes in this moment he could see her face and at least try and read what she’s thinking. Of all the people to meet in a dark hole, he never thought it’d be her.

“Yes?”

He can hear her shuffle as if she’s moving away from him. “Hold on a second…where are you going?” He asks and stands very carefully, so as not to knock himself unconscious on a protruding rock he couldn’t see in this damned pitch.

“You’re a liar.” She says it with venom and Silver tries to convey his bewilderment. “I don’t understand? We’ve never met before and it’s hard as hell to read what’s happening here in the fucking dark. Is there anywhere with a light source?” He didn’t care if it was a glowing mushroom on the wall, he needed to get his bearings.

“You’re not real.” She supplies but she hasn’t run away from him yet and he counts that as a win.

“I assure you, I’m very real. I know James Flint, I was hired as a caregiver to Mrs. Hamilton.”

There’s silence for a long time after that and he skirts along the wall, using his hands to guide him against the uninviting stone. It seems this place is made of hidden sharp edges at every turn.  

She whispers more to herself than to him, “What did he do…” as if she’s astonished.

“Who?” Silver asks

“Do you know Thomas too?” And her voice is softer this time.

Silver swallows and his chest tightens uncomfortably. He’d forgotten she’d gone missing before his death. “He’s..” He begins but she interrupts with, “…he’s gone.”

He stares pityingly towards what he thinks is her dark shape, “I’m so sorry, believe me.”

“I knew, somehow I knew but to hear it now…after all this time.” Her voice is hollowed; defeated. The tension from earlier has lifted and given way to something akin to despair.

“We have to get out of here. We have to find James.” Silver replies, resolute and she laughs bitterly. It echoes back at him from the walls as if there are somehow two Eleanor’s in different parts of the room. It’s hard to gain a sense of direction from it.

“There is no way out of here, Mr. Silver. Not unless _he_ lets you out.” Her sentence is marked by the sudden shaking of the rock and the crumbling dust that follows. He stumbles, falling forward onto the cold unforgiving ground. The sound of moving stone and snapping roots scratches in the blackness. Silver raises his voice above it, “What the hell is happening?”

Eleanor didn’t seem fazed by it that he could tell. She waits in silence for the shifting to end and when the ground stops shaking she says, “It’s shifting, it’s always moving. New doors open where there were none before and it’s never the same. Come..”

He hears her shuffle towards him and feels a cold hand grasp at his arm. She pulls lightly and they move along the wall through the dark together, one foot in front of the other.

“You still think I’m a liar or imagined?” Silver questions.

“I don’t think you’re a liar.”

They enter a new passageway and that’s when he spots the only light source sitting against a far wall. It’s a tiny waxy candle, flickering from unknown drafts of wind. They stumble towards it, starved for its small reprieve and both kneel beside it as if it’s a precious thing. Silver never realized how much he took such light for granted. Eleanor is porcelain pale from living in the dark and her hair is messy, dirt covered and he thinks it once used to be a beautiful shade of blonde. Her clothes are even dirtier, caked with all manner of things. She’s staring at Silver’s face as if she’s fascinated as if she’s never seen another face before. She taps his shoulder cautiously with her hand.

“Still very real.” Silver replies, eyeing her. She looks wild as if she belongs here as if she’s one of _them_ and he hated himself for thinking that. Her eyes brim with wetness and she wipes them away, smearing the mud. “I’ve only spoken to ghosts and to… _him_. Forgive me, I don’t remember what it’s like to see another face that isn’t here to torment me.”

He still harbored confusion as to why she reacted to his name the way she did but he wasn’t going to push it. “Who is _him_?” Silver asks instead.

“Their king…Charles Vane.” She quietly says and slides her back against the wall.  Silver sits cross-legged in front of her, sharing the light. The flame dances between the two of them, providing them shadows.

“They worship him? He leads them?” Silver questions and he knows he's just scratching the surface of this very deep pit. He didn’t even know who exactly these people bathed in soil were in the first place and better yet why the hell they thought he was their ‘bull’.

Eleanor watches him with an exhausted sorrow, “It’s not him they worship. He speaks to their gods, he’s their conduit.”

“Who are their gods?”

Eleanor’s expression mirrors a repressed terror; a practiced fear made from memories. She’s seen them. “You’ll see them soon enough.” Eleanor supplies eerily.

Silver huffs, “I’m not sure I want to by the sounds of it.”

“You can hear them above sometimes if you listen carefully.” She adds and points to the dark residing above them like a creature itself. Silver chances a glance even though he knows it’s too dark to see anything.

“They’re…above us?” It’s his turn to appear utterly terrified.

She pulled a small dented tin from beside the rock and opened it to reveal crushed bugs inside, “not now, you’d hear the whispering.” She replies, softly and he blanches as if that’s supposed to calm him. She holds out the tin as a gesture to him and he squints before slowly shaking his head. She takes a beetle out of the tin and eats it.

She shrugs, “Not exactly a pastry but it gets me by and it will you too.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Silver nods and tries not to glance up into the darkness above. The feeling of being observed doesn’t abate. He continues, “If Charles Vane is the only way out of here then how do I get an audience with him?”

He suddenly remembers the note he received from the crow..from Billy. _‘knock thrice’_ Eleanor answers as if she plucked the answer out of his head, “Knock three times on the mirror.”

Silver shifts, moving closer to the flame, feeling safer in the light. The darkness is growing bolder and the shadows darker. “Where is the mirror?”

She has an odd pitying look directed at him as if she knows something he’s yet to realize. It unsettles him to such a degree that he leaves the silence to claim them.

\--

James Flint may be rash with his unbidden anger but he wasn’t stupid. He didn’t provoke a group of otherworldly beings without any thought as to what to do if they retaliate.

For the first time in years, he traveled beyond the mountain and into the gray swamp that resides there. It’s a sad moor of land that not many dwell, except one. The one who had consigned him as this crumbling guardian.

He spots a tree snap in half and watches it with indifference as it’s swallowed by the swamp entirely. The trees here are already dead; claws to the light. He doesn’t know what happened in this place to cause such decay and devastation. It’s as if the land is trapped in eternal grief. The large misshapen tree with its twisted gnarled roots beckons him up the small hill it resided on. The hill is nothing but mud and swamp water, not a patch of green to be seen. His boots slide against it as treks up towards it. Inside the trunk of the tree is a rounded door that is rusted from disuse.  He pulls on the handle forcefully and it scrapes open, sending broken twigs along with it.

He steps inside the dank opening and shuts it behind him. The room he’s in is a claustrophobic space with just a spiral of stairs leading downwards into the earth. He follows the steps down that resembled the spiral of Theodorus into a cozy living area warmed by firelight. The walls are made of mud and root, the furniture twisted wood, carefully carved. He spots her sitting in a torn upholstered chair by the fire. Her dark hair is tied back in a comfortable braided knot. She’s sewing twigs and chimes together that clink softly as she works. “I was thinking of you just now.” She says.

He sets his hand to the back of one of the beautiful rooted chairs, “I need your help, Miranda.”

\--

The mirror was stained in dried dirty water and the frame was partially falling off. It hadn’t been far into the dark and it was Eleanor that had insisted to knock three times on it. Nothing happened in that instant, of course, these things take time.

She had fallen asleep against the wall; head lulled to the side. She looked completely exhausted and Silver suspects sleep didn’t come easy in a place like this. He’s sitting against the wall on the other side of the rock the candle resided on, with his knees up and arms folded over them.

It’s so silent that he can hear the tiny flame fight the draft and the crumbling of rock far into the void. He allows himself to think of James Flint then, something he’s been afraid of doing since wondering in the dark. He wonders if James believes Silver is lost like Thomas or Eleanor was to him. He wonders if he’s not traipsing through the woods coaxing out the monsters as he sits here, trapped like some rodent.

A voice reaches out of the darkness, “Hello, Mr. Silver, may we speak in private?”

“Jesus…fuck.” Silver exclaims, startled towards the darkness. He can’t see who it is that’s speaking to him, they are standing out of the light.

“I have other appointments to tend to and would like to do this quickly.” The voice snipes impatiently and Silver slowly stands from his sitting position not moving from the light.

“Can I…at least see who is speaking to me, before I wander off into the dark?” Silver tries, his tone shakier than he wanted to convey.

A man appears from the shadow, looking bored with the whole affair. He had a young round face and is wearing round black-rimmed glasses.

“Where are we going?” Silver asks.

“I am Dufresne and I assure you that no harm will come to you if you please?” Dufresne insists and motions for him to follow.

Silver looks over at Eleanor who is still fast asleep before glancing back at the strange man framed in darkness. “She’ll be fine,” Dufresne adds. He wasn’t holding a candle or a flashlight or anything that could provide them with any light at all.

“How the hell are we supposed to see where we’re going?” Silver asks as he cautiously walks towards him. Dufresne says nothing and disappears into the blackness as if swallowed by it.

“Wonderful…” Silver sighs.


	10. The Boy in the Mirror

Miranda is blinking at him from across the table and holding a cup of tea she’s yet to drink out of. “James…have you lost your mind? You want to go into the labyrinth beneath the mountain?”

James considers this with the tilt of his head and says, “I don’t have a choice.”

“Why ever not? Because they have the caregiver?” Miranda sets her tea down now, forgetting its existence in the span of a few moments.

“He’s…” He barely begins and he can see the way her expression fades into realization. He’s grateful she saves him the trouble of saying what exactly _he_ is to him. James didn’t even know that himself really.

“Persephone…” She finishes.

She’s staring at him with a new sense of wonder and he cringes at the scrutiny.  “I need you to tell me how I can get in there.” He quickly changes the subject back to where it should be.

She leans back, assessing her thoughts, “Do you have something of his? Hair would be preferable.”

“He’s staying at the house, I could bring you back something. Why?”

“I’m sure you’d want to speak with him, wouldn’t you? Before you make the journey into the dark.” She asks with the quirk of her brow.

“Then I’ll retrieve something of his for you.” He agrees and promptly stands.

“What’s his name?”

He stiffens, stopping his feet. He closes his eyes to the world for a moment and quietly asks, “Does it matter?”

She huffs indignantly, “Of course it does, it--”

He interrupts, “John Silver.”

He doesn’t turn to face her and he expected the silence that followed and can tell by her intake of breath she’s about to speak. He interrupts before she can reply, “I’ll get what you need.”

“James…” She tries but he’s up the stairs before she can add anything else. He didn’t want to hear it, he didn’t want to explain it.

He pushes the door open, back out into the murky swamp and feels the weight of the inevitable dread threaten to sink him.

\--

“What you must remember above all, Mr. Silver…is that we are not to be trifled with,” Dufresne warns and Silver stumbles, holding his hand against the rock wall. He keeps looking back at the small flickering light where Eleanor slept, getting further away. Something’s wrong, he knows this and yet he keeps following.

“Where exactly are we going?” Silver asks and kicks something heavy which he hopes is a rock and not a skull. Although, he would bet it’s the latter. He runs straight into Dufresne’s back not realizing he had stopped.

He sighs at Silver and proceeds to open a passage in the wall from what Silver could ascertain. The shifting of stone gives it away. The labyrinth is a living organism. It moves, it breathes, like those plants in James’ garden.

“This way.”

“I’m not going in there.” Silver supplies and Dufresne turns to him, he can see him blinking in the dim light from the candle down the hall.

“You wanted an audience with the king and that is what I am providing. It’s about time you relinquish your fear of the dark.” Dufresne states and steps into the opening.

Silver hesitates, glancing back at the light and then forward towards that pit on all sides. He reaches his arm out in front of him and trips over the lip inside the doorway. He falls, slapping his palms to the hard floor with a grunt.

“Watch your step…” Dufresne flatly adds after the fact. His irritatingly indifferent demeanor and cryptic tone left much to be desired. Silver clenches his jaw and forces himself to stand, now unable to find a wall to support himself. He felt vulnerable waving his arms around in the dark. “How the hell can you see?”

“It isn’t about seeing…it’s about listening.” Dufresne replies and Silver squints in the direction ahead of him. His irritation grows, “I don’t hear a goddamn thing.”

“That’s because you aren’t listening. There are stairs here…” Dufresne unhelpfully adds.

“You’ve got to be kidding me…” Silver relays and stops, when a musty draft caresses his face, sending strands of his hair across his forehead. He can hear Dufresne’s footsteps leaving him behind but also something else. Something above him. The soft sound of wings in the gaping darkness. There’s a very faint whisper, one he tries to listen for. It’s many different voices at once, men and women all in various states of distress. It’s incredibly disturbing and he’s paralyzed by deadly curiosity.

Without warning, a hand covers Silver’s mouth and rips him backwards towards the edge of the shapeless room. They tumble from the force of it into the original hallway.  Silver struggles and forces himself away from the desperate grasp.

“He’s the spider!” He hears Eleanor say in quick pants of breath from in front of him. The light of the candle down the long stretch of the hall provided just enough, that he’s able to make out the shape of her. His heart is thundering against his ribs.

“What the hell does that mean?” He asks her, calming himself against the stone wall.

She appears displeased with him even if he can’t quite make out her facial expressions. “It means don’t trust Dufresne, no matter what he tells you and don’t follow him.”

Silver sighs, “If it wasn’t obvious before it must be obvious to you now that I am completely out of my depth here. I had thought he was taking me to speak with Charles Vane.”

A door shuts from somewhere in the dark and Eleanor grips his arm, hauling him up with her. “We have to run.”  

Eleanor snatches the candle as they pass and the small significant flame is snuffed out. They grab hands and she pulls him through the maw. She’s his guide. Silver now, more than anything, wants to tell James that in a sideways world, in a maze of darkness, the woman James considered a sister, found him. That she knew the dark and what to take from it and what not to take.  More than anything, Silver wanted to bring her home to him.

He slams into a wall of spider webs, that stick and reach out to his face. Eleanor pulls them down to the floor and they begin to crawl beneath the sea of them. Something scurries far behind them and Eleanor stumbles, getting tangled in more enormous webs. Silver quickly tries to rip away what's tangling Eleanor. He grabs her hand, standing, and pulls her free of it.

The wall is crumbling to the right of them and they avoid it, sidestepping a pile of something that smells like decay. Silver thinks in abject terror that when Eleanor had called Dufresne a spider that she meant it literally.  The scurrying grows closer and Eleanor grabs his hand, pressing it against a thick vine.

“We have to climb.” She says, hastily. He can hear the stretching of twigs and leaves as she begins her ascent. He reaches above and pulls himself up, climbing the vines like thin ropes. “Why hasn’t Dufresne harmed you?” Silver asks between breaths. The last thing he wants to be doing is rock climbing in the fucking dark but he suspects it’s better than the alternative.

“Vane won’t allow it.” She says and then yelps from slipping. Small rocks crumble into Silver’s hair and he coughs against it, almost losing his grip. “You okay?!” He yells above and she scrambles, breathing heavily.

“Yes, keep climbing!” She calls.

There’s a ripping sound from above; the shredding of leaves and Eleanor screams his name. The vine he’s climbing on comes loose and then he’s falling, falling, falling into the abyss.

He hits water unexpectedly and the chill of it suffocates his lungs. There are hands grasping his clothing from down below but they aren’t pulling him down with them, they are pushing him forward through the dark water. He struggles against their grasp but there’s no space in which he can kick free.

He finally breaks the surface, gulping the air presented to him and finds a rocky surface to crawl onto, out of the freezing well. He lies there shivering, his cheek pressed against the wet stone and his hair plastered to his face and neck.

There’s light. It’s such a small amount that it’s hard to see much beyond the small relief of it but it’s something. He reaches out to it as if it’s made of warmth. It’s shining down from a source in the ceiling ahead of him. He moves, slowly, pressing his hands to the stone to force himself upright. He’s so cold, so unbelievably freezing that he has a hard time moving.

He sees it then. A tall mirror with a wooden carved frame, resting upright against a rock. He crosses his arms against his soaked clothing and trembles. He doesn’t spot his reflection in it, which sets him off balance. In fact, it wasn’t reflecting the world around him at all but somewhere different. Somewhere familiar. He releases a breath when he recognizes the scene inside the mirror, the dark wood and the partial view of the staircase. He’s looking into James Flint’s house through one of the mirrors on the third floor. He stumbles towards it and presses his palm to the glass. It looks warm and bright, different. It’s as if he’s looking through to when the house was younger, happier and before grief had claimed it.

“James?” He speaks to it but nothing changes. It isn't a static image he is seeing either. He could make out small particles of dust floating in the light of the open window in the hall. He could feel the warmth of it through the glass in the mirror and he wanted so desperately to walk through it. He hits his fist to the frame, calling to him again and hoping he could somehow hear him across worlds from the beneath.  

There’s an inhuman shriek far off into the darkness behind him but he doesn’t turn to look, he just keeps staring into that warm world. He hears the creaking of the wood from the stairs within that world and then, “Hello?” His voice sounded younger, more uncertain but it’s unmistakable.

“Here!” Silver calls louder.  

A face steps up to the mirror. A younger, pale skinned, beautifully freckled face and Silver’s breath is stolen from him never to return from the sight. It’s James, only barely in his twenties, if that. His eyes are bright pools of green and there’s the beginnings of an unsure smile on his face as he watches Silver in the mirror.

“Can you see me?” Silver asks and James nods.

“Who are you?” The young James asks.

Silver couldn’t stop staring with unabashed awe. James looked happy and bright, unburdened. There’s another shriek from behind him and Silver doesn’t turn, even if it’s growing closer. Whatever manner of beast it was, Silver knew it’s coming for him. He had to run but he couldn’t. Not now, not ever. His feet are rooted to the rock, he’s a statue to it. He’s pretty sure he’s screwing up the space-time continuum somehow but maybe this is meant to happen? Maybe it always happens? It’s not as if Silver believes in fate, destiny or inevitably but this…this is monumental as if a puzzle piece finally snapped into place inside him. Young James smiles at him wider, unafraid with quiet curiosity and Silver thinks he’d be accepting of anything if this is the final image he sees.

“My name…” Silver clears his throat, his eyes becoming glassy. “is John Silver.” 

“James Flint.” He replies with quick exuberance.

Silver’s voice wavers, “It’s…nice to meet you.”

“Can you not come through?” James asks, studying the mirror's frame.

“No. I didn’t think it’s possible.” Silver replies and there’s a splash from behind him. Something is lurking in the waves and thrashing towards the shore he resided on. Silver turns towards the noise finally and sees a dark monstrous silhouette headed for him. He glances back to James with fearful distress. “I have to go.”

“Hold on a moment!” James exclaims and carves something into the frame Silver can’t see. James breathes on the glass and draws a symbol in the condensation. To Silver’s bewilderment, the glass ripples, turning to liquid. James’ hand actually reaches through the mirror and hangs in the cold air, inviting him into the warmth. He wants Silver to come to that world, that time when things didn’t have so many sharp edges. The beast in the dark isn’t far behind him, he can feel the decrepit air reach him.

He takes James’ hand, and it warms his freezing palm. He escapes into time itself, the barrier snapped loose. Silver believes in one constant now, that in all worlds and in all times James Flint will deliver him.


	11. The Well of Time

The sunlight bounces between the open windows as if it’s contented to be allowed inside. He’s never seen the house look this radiant. The warmth of it is all-consuming. He’s dripping water all over the floorboards and he catches young James’ bewitching eyes.

“I’m guessing you need a towel.” James chides with a smirk and Silver tilts his head at this anomaly in front of him.

“That would help.” Silver manages to say and James disappears into one of the rooms there. He can hear soft music coming from downstairs and the sound of someone chopping vegetables. He’s not supposed to be here, he shouldn’t be here. This isn’t his James, this isn’t his time. This James belongs to Thomas.

_Thomas_

Would it be possible…could it be possible to change things? He felt a pang in his heart as if something got caught in the gears of it. He couldn’t be so selfish as to not try but what else would that change? Had this already happened in the present? His head is about to collapse from the weight of the questions storming inside of it like an invading force.

“Here you go.” The soft voice quiets all chaos and he turns to face young James again who has the audacity to give him a brilliant grin.

_Who are you?_

“You’re not afraid of me? I did just step out of the underworld and into your house.” Silver asks, in a permeant state of perplexity.

“You aren’t the first to travel through the mirrors. They are doorways after all.” James replies and crosses his arms comfortably. Even his body language is different than _his_ James but it was still so undeniably him.

“James!” A familiar voice calls from downstairs.

“Come…” He says and motions for him to follow him down the bright path to the kitchen. Everything is made of light, the glass captured it and spun it across the room. The house is in a full bloom and that is so extraordinary to Silver that he just has to stop and stare in awe of it.

In the kitchen is a younger and healthier Mrs. Hamilton with a long beautiful braid against her shoulder. She smiles warmly at James and blinks curiously at Silver, halting her chopping. “Who is this?”

“His name is John Silver and he needed rescuing.” James provides and sits at the table overlooking the garden. The garden which is teaming with life. Butterflies and bees could hold a coronation there.

“You must be hungry, John?” Mrs. Hamilton asks with a nod. He switches his gaze between them both and his throat felt like a vise. His eyes growing wet and he swallowed against the sting that followed. He spots what looks to be the back of Eleanor’s head sitting outside, drinking ice tea. Her long blond hair is pulled partially back and is blowing gently in the wind around her. She’s reading in the sunlight.

“John?” Mrs. Hamilton presses and Silver realizes he hadn’t answered.

“Sorry..no, thank you. This is all very…odd.”

“I can imagine.” Mrs. Hamilton says and exchanges a sly look with James.

“Is…there a Thomas here?” Silver asks and he watches James’ eyes light up at the name and feels like his chest is being crushed.

“He’s visiting Aunt Mya this weekend, I believe.” James provides. “Why?”

“Ah…no reason. I..don’t really know how to answer that if I’m being honest.” Silver replies, his conversation skills have escaped him apparently.

“Okay then,” James says and chuckles. It’s a lovely small laugh that he has heard before. He takes comfort that not all of this young man has wilted away. “Where are you from?” James continues.

Silver looks between them again and knows they are more than amiable to the strange. For they themselves are strange to live in such a place that is alive in the way things aren’t supposed to be.

“I’m from another time.” Silver replies and they both have matching looks of wonder just for him.  

“What time?” James asks and studies Silver’s damp clothing with a scrutiny that causes Silver to clear his throat. “Years into the future.” He replies and can’t stop the solemn expression from forming on his face. Their looks of wonder begin to fade and he’s already mourning the loss of it.

“That bad?” James asks

He couldn’t be the one to bring darkness here. He didn’t want to be the shadow that marks this beautiful bright place.

“I don’t think I should be here. I don’t belong here.” Silver quietly says and begins to back away towards the doorway. It’s too much, all of it, he can’t handle the light, their smiles, their acceptance of him.

“Why don’t you sit down for a moment and I’ll get you some tea.” Mrs. Hamilton kindly says.

They had company, and happiness here. This isn’t where he’s needed. He belongs in the dark with the James who forever resides there. That is his purpose if he ever had one. Silver stumbles, feeling dizzy, light headed. James quickly stands, grabbing his elbow and guiding him to the dining chair by the window.  Silver slumps into it and looks out to the mountain. Even the mountain looks inviting from this view. James sits in front of him, enraptured as if he’s the enigma.

“Thank you for the rescue by the way.” Silver states and gains a small smile from James for his trouble.

James squints at him in thought, “We’ve never met before this?”

“No. Unless I’m somehow taken further back in time which I wouldn’t rule out at this point.” Silver adds with a grimace.

“Why did you need rescuing, if I may ask?” James questions politely and Silver’s gaze finds the mountain again. He finds if he stares too long at _this_ James he’ll crumble away to nothing and welcome the prospect. “It’s…a long sad story.” Silver discloses.

“Do we know each other in this future?”

Silver holds his gaze for the longest time. There is only breath and light between them now. There’s a growing realization there and Silver didn’t want there to be, it would only cause confusion.

“As I said, I don’t belong here…” Silver hesitates and then says, “…I must at least tell you this.”

Silver has to try this, for who would he be if he didn’t?

“It’s about Thomas.”

All sound ceases in that instant. It’s as if time itself had paused. The pleasant ticking of the clock stops. The butterflies are frozen in the air above the rose bushes. James and Mrs. Hamilton remained suspended, unmoving. Silver stands quickly, knocking over the chair to the floor. Eleanor is stilled while turning a page outside.

“Mr. Silver!” A familiar voice calls from the third floor. “Can you hear me? Come back.”

It’s Eleanor, only the Eleanor from his time or at least it had to be. He runs up the stairs to the third floor and sees what appears to be water flowing out of the mirror at the far end of the hall. It’s flooding the wood and it’s the only animate thing at the moment. Silver knew he had to step inside of it, out of the warmth, out of the light. He didn’t have a chance to tell James about Thomas. It hadn’t been his purpose. He takes a final glance and commits the beauty to memory before he takes a deep breath. He stares at the swirling blackness in the mirror in front of him and the water pouring out and over his feet. He winces as if prepares to be struck and steps through, forward in time.

He's immediately suffocating in ice cold water again and struggles against the dark to reach the top which is lighted from a blue glowing mushroom on the wall. He gasps for air when he reaches the surface and Eleanor is standing on the rocky shore, motioning for him to swim to her. He does so as quick as he’s able and collapses onto the stone again, utterly frigid and raw. He’s shaking violently and Eleanor grabs his shoulders and drags him up further away from the water.

“I thought you were dead.” She says and her voice sounds metallic against the stones.

Silver shivers, stammering out words in between, “What th—ee f—fuck happened?”

“You fell into one of the wells of time. I had to find you before Dufresne did.” She lifts his arm to wrap over her shoulder and helps him stand. They lumber along the slippery rocks until they come to a flat surface partially shadowed from the glow. She sets Silver against the wall and he hugs his arms shakily.

After several failed attempts Eleanor is able to create a small fire and the relief is immense. Silver holds out his palms to the flames and he would be contented if they swallowed him at this point, he’s so freezing.

“I spoke to a younger James, if you can believe it….you probably can, I wanted to tell him about Thomas but I didn’t get the chance.” Silver admits and Eleanor glances at him from across the small fire.

“For your sake, it’s good you didn’t.” She replies and it catches him off guard. He opens his mouth to speak and then closes it again in confusion. She continues, noticing his distress, “It’s not my place to tell you why.”

“Whose place is it exactly?” Silver asks and she watches the flames crackle, demanding to expand.

\--

_If this house is a heart…_

Billy breaks free from the forest to the clearing as if he’s cut open a part of it. It leads to a small garden and from there, the house on the hill. The living and breathing abomination. It has grown since Flint has bound himself to it. It will slowly eat away the forest if it were to go unchallenged. 

_…you’re the flame to it._

James Flint stands at the top of the stairs leading down to the clearing where Billy now stood. Billy pushes the small rope swing with amusement and it dangles there silently. A reminder of what this place used to be and is no more.

Flint is rage and darkness. The shadow of the house behind him makes it seem like two beasts await him. “Where is he?” Flint snarls. There’s an undercurrent of desperation there and Billy captures it like a moth.

“Who?” He plays and Flint slowly descends the steps, closer and closer like a wolf leaving its den.

“No, Billy. No games, no tricks. I’ve had enough. Tell me what you’ve done with him. I know you took him to the mountain.”

Billy crushes a fallen rose with his bare foot, burying it in the mud, “I plucked him from your heart and set him in a jar where there is no light.”

“You wicked things, all of you! He’s done nothing to deserve your wrath, neither did Thomas. Burn me, take me but why them?” Flint’s anguish is an archaic grief, one Billy has been party to for some time.

“Torment is what we are. We live in torment, breathe in blood. We were born in twigs. We deserve the wood.” Billy replies and he tries not to smile. He could tear him up, make him into a tree. 

“Deserve? No one gets what they deserve or what they are owed. None of you ever understood that.” Flint replies and then turns, walking back up the steps. Billy watches him curiously open the back door and walk inside the mouth of it, leaving it gaping open for him. He’s inviting him inside.

Billy ascends the stairs and stares into the blackness that awaits him. A small part of him is terrified of it but he puts those thoughts away. He could be the one to finally put an end to the gateway; to mold two worlds into one. He could be the savior. The fox triumphant in the fog while the beast lay slain. Vane would fall too and the Bull would reign, he would write it in blood with bone in the walls of this _house_.

Its maw is the beginning. He steps inside the jaws of it, leaving a trail of muddy footprints in his wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are appreciated :) Thank you!


	12. The Guide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a bit of gore in this but not too much. I tried to leave most of it up to the imagination, which probably makes it worse lol

The bones of the house creak around him, expanding and breathing.

Billy looked ahead towards the staircase where Flint stood. He is partially in shadow and the only thing he can see clearly is his mouth, forming a snarl. His eyes are dark specks that barely glisten in the dim light. It’s a challenge and Billy meets his stare head on. How long had they been circling each other? How many years had the woods and the house been at odds? What purpose does this gateway have any longer? Billy knew that keeping the two worlds separate wouldn’t last and that soon the house would crumble from the force of the future.

“If I don’t topple this beast, then the Bull will. I know this.” Billy says and Flint makes no move to attack him; no indication of reprisal. Yet, Billy produces a dagger, poisoned tipped. One slice would send any man back into the dirt.

“Your bull is a myth, Billy. One all of you created to give yourself purpose when there is none. There’s just chaos, the chaos you spread. Entropy until there is nothing left. That is what you are and make no mistake, I will see that it ends.” His voice is smooth, calm and there’s finality to it. The kind of finality that would terrify anyone when gripped with it. The creaking in the boards of house grow louder, drawing Billy’s attention but not enough to set him off guard. He stepped back with his muddy bare feet and waited. The walls of the house are expanding and contracting. Billy knew he was standing in the throat of it.

“An abomination..” Billy whispers.

“It keeps the chaos…you…from spreading. It’s necessary.” Flint replies and Billy smiles at him, the vicious sort of smile like a dagger of its own.

“We are a natural part of this world, the old world, the world before and the world after.”

Flint grips the edge of the railing as if he’s preventing himself from lashing out and speaks, “You’ve had your day. You’re a crumbling relic.”

There’s a cracking sound as if the house is waking from a long slumber. The ground shudders and shakes, tumbling Billy; dagger still in his hand.  Flint steps closer and Billy lashes out too soon, too quick and swings at air like a frightened animal.  He notices as he tries to stand that something held him to the floor. Billy’s legs stick to the floorboards as if he’s caught in a web. He’s unable to push himself up, no matter how hard he forces it. The grip is excruciating, unyielding. He had to crawl away, he had to slice until there’s nothing left, he had to find a mirror; a mirror home.  

“You wretched creature,” Flint says pityingly. What Billy felt wrapped around him was more than hate. This was something new. Something that makes him want to stay in the ever-crushing embrace.  This creature filled with a devastation and grief has the darkest look for him and only him.

Billy wants to laugh but he’s being consumed, consumed by the wood, the earth, this house. _If this house is a heart_ …but it isn’t a heart. It’s vengeance and Flint’s expression blooms into something terrifying, only for him. Flint is the house made into form, given flesh and voice but he is no man. He cannot be.

“You’re the end of us.” Billy speaks in pained wonderment.

He had entered the maw and it should be no surprise that the beast would swallow him whole. 

\--

There’s a quiet language to their footsteps and for the first time in what felt like an eternity they can see in front of them with the torch Eleanor had retrieved. The shadows aren’t their friends here, they lash out like claws, scraping the rock walls. The walls begin to resemble bone the deeper they travel as if they are traversing through a fossil of a forgotten species.

“What…are their gods exactly?” Silver asks as if this is the new form of pleasant conversation. It kept his mind nervously focused off the fact that a spider was lurking somewhere in their periphery, on the hunt.

“They eat bones.” Is Eleanor’s response and Silver wonders why he expected the answer to relieve his anxiety. “Or..drink the marrow specifically.” She continues to his dismay.

“..and how do you know this?” Silver grimaces and offers to take the torch for a change. She obliges, handing him the rusted metal holder. The warmth from the flame is a small bit of relief.

“I was taken to the feeding chamber to watch. They view it as sacred.” Eleanor replies and to her credit, she seems disturbed at least. Even though her initial calm demeanor would suggest otherwise.

“What about their king? What can you tell me about him?” Silver tries to change the subject to somewhere he may be able to wrap his head around.

Eleanor is abrupt and unapologetic, “He’ll either deem you worthy or eat your heart. There’s no in between.”

Silver gawks at her, as he shines the flame into a darkened corner revealing nothing but bits of bone, “Christ…your honesty is absolutely terrifying.”

She laughs a little at that, “Sorry. I’ve never seen the point in lying, no sense in false comfort.”

Silver spots movement down a long adjacent corridor and grabs Eleanor’s arm, tugging her into a separate alcove. It’s with regret that they have to snuff out of the flame.

Silver says in a hushed tone, “Why even stick with me in the first place? If Dufresne is after me.”

“I’m actually starting to believe you may be our way out.” Eleanor supplies. Silver blanches and tilts his head, his hair falling messily into his face. “Really? I would have thought I’ve done everything to convince you otherwise.”

She whispers, quickly. “The opposite, actually. Now, shut up, John, please.”

They press their backs tightly to the wall in the alcove as the scurrying grows ever closer and then promptly stops. Silver stares ahead at the blackness and it’s too quiet. He concentrates on his breathing because even that seemed too loud in this place. A rock crumbles above them, catching their attention but nothing comes of it. Silver closes his eyes even though there is no difference between shades of dark. Having his eyes open is almost the same as closing them. Eleanor grabs his wrist and her grip is bone crushing.

“I think it’s time we have a proper chat this time, Mr. Silver.” Comes the sullen voice from far into the dark. Dufresne is waiting there, patiently. He’s an impatient predator.

Silver says nothing and the silence that follows leaves a disturbing apprehension.

“No reason to be rude. I’m asking you nicely.” Dufresne continues.

Eleanor tugs on his wrist more forcefully, indicating for them to run and he obeys. They move quickly through the dark, aimless, terrified with only their panicked breath for company. Silver still had a hold of the flameless torch. Something large and sharpened lashed out them, eliciting a scream from Eleanor. Silver swung the torch holder, pointed end outwards, stabbing the offending horror. There’s an inhuman yowl that resounds from it and it echoes behind them into forever.

The floor gives way to a black cliff but their momentum is too much. They clash into one another and tumble into the dark; two Alice’s falling further down the rabbit hole.

There’s a splash and Silver chokes against the putrid smell that assaults his senses. A small bit of light is coming off the floor from a blue mushroom and he can see the small mountainous piles of disgust. It wasn’t water he had landed in but a pile of something he’d rather not examine too closely. What he could ascertain is that they were leftovers of some kind. “Oh fuck….what the fuck.” Silver breathes out heavily. He crawls out of it, pressing his palms to the floor and coughing against the odor. He can hear Eleanor not far, slipping on the mess with her own slew of unintelligible words. Her silhouette appears in the dim light walking towards him. She looked like a stumbling specter. There are hundreds of bones surrounding them in haphazard piles. Silver thinks this is one of the few moments where he didn’t actually want to see into the dark. She helps him stand and they both slip on the mess simultaneously but not enough to fall back into it. They wrap their arms over each other’s shoulders to keep balanced and walk towards the glowing light at the far end of the large vaulted chamber.

“I don’t really know where we are going.” Confesses Eleanor and Silver shrugs against her arm.

“Well…it’s better than sitting in the dark.” Silver lies. He’d think anything would be better than this, whatever the hell this _is_.  

They stumble into the next room and break away from each other when the floor becomes more stable. There are many more glowing mushrooms ahead, on the ceiling, on the floor, gathering in tiny clusters on the wall. They are alive and alight. Silver admires one as he passes, painting his stained skin in a blue glow. There are luminescent insects floating amongst the spores. Should he dare say that it looks beautiful?

There’s a thud behind him and he turns to see that Eleanor had collapsed unconscious into a bed of dried moss. “Eleanor?” Silver tries and hurries over to her. He shakes her shoulder but she doesn’t stir. 

“Eleanor…” he repeats louder. He lifts her and she goes limp. Her face is stained with the same disgust as his and her skin is sickly pale beneath. There’s wetness at her back and his dirtied palm comes away with blood. He moves her to examine her back and her chin rests against his shoulder. He can see a small gash torn through her clothing. He remembers when the spider-like creature had chased them into this hole and how it had lashed out. He suspects this gash was meant for him. She’s still breathing, her chest slowly rises and falls.

“Shit…” He unhelpfully replies to the silence and lifts her.  He carries her through the eerie path of wild moss and glowing blue dancing insects. It’s like a tunnel of gliding soft light. It seems to brighten as they pass as if the fungi are communicating; pointing the way. Even though there is only one way to go and that’s ahead, further and further into the unknown. The beauty of it is dashed when his shoe squelches on something unpleasant and he grimaces. One thing he knew for certain is that they’re both getting out of this hell and back to where they belonged.  

\--

James stood in Miranda’s pleasant underground hut with Silver’s comb in his hand. He rests it on the table and Miranda stands from the fire, wiping her hands softly down her dress.

“I suspect you ran into some trouble?” She asks and glances at him but her eyes don’t linger. He knows what she wants to ask him but he’s glad she doesn’t. They’ve always been able to communicate silently since he’s known her.

“Billy Bones paid me a visit,” James replies and she grabs the comb from the table gently and gives him her full attention.

“It didn’t end well for him then?”

“No. It did not.” James responds and she nods once before heading back over to the crackling fire. She tosses dirt into like _they_ do. The soil worshipers always cling to the guile of decay. He forgets sometimes that she was one of them once but she was cast out when she was a girl. She never told him why but he suspects whatever she did it was for good reason and that was enough for him. She kneels by the fire; her dress fanning out neatly around her. Miranda has always been so effortlessly graceful. He joins her and kneels silently beside her. She tosses the comb into the flames and it eats it up willingly. She closes her eyes as the fire painted shadows over her face. The aroma created from it is suffocating and it only heightens his awareness that the small room is becoming darker. She drinks a small glass vial and then spits it towards the flames. They lash out with a hiss and begin to slowly coil around the room like a snake. The flames swim up towards the ceiling but without setting anything aflame. It circles him and the heat of it threatens his cheek. Miranda is looking at him now, the fire reflected in her eyes, she was the flame, the snake, the guide.

“Are you ready to speak with him?” She asks, darkly.

Without hesitation or even a breath between, he replies, “Yes.”


	13. A Snake of Flame

The corridor of glowing mycelium beckons Silver ever onwards. Eleanor remains limp in his arms and she’s yet to stir. He’s at a loss for what to do for her, except get her out of this hellish labyrinth.

The glow leads him into a large room with a ceiling that stretches high up into the dark. There’s a large group of glowing fungi hanging like stalactites. They cast down a funnel of light in the center of the room like a spotlight on a stage. Silver moves through the dark cautiously, gripping Eleanor tightly. There’s an unease growing in the back of his mind, one deeper than the surface terror. It’s like he’s waiting for a show to begin and that the glowing mushrooms weren’t actually leading him to their escape but to just the opposite.

He can hear water dripping and echoing from far off places. He sticks to the shadows, keeping his eye on the spotlight as if it could move and suddenly direct its attention towards him.  There are more bones below his feet and he quietly steps over each as to not draw anything in the dark to his position. He wonders idly how many people have died in this place, how many sacrifices were made and how many people just like him thought there’s a way out of this. Is he a fool to think it?

There’s a crumbling sound at the edge of the room. Rocks fall and splash into a pool he can’t see. Something is moving around in the dark with him. Silver accidentally kicks a skull, sending it rolling towards the glowing spotlight. He cringes from the action and presses his back to the wall. Eleanor remains like a rag doll in his arms. The skull slowly comes to a stop in the light; its gaping eyes pointed upwards towards the ceiling. All is deathly silent. Silver releases a slow quiet breath.

He hears the scurrying then, the echoed scratching of many legs above. It doesn’t take long for the hideous creature to appear; dropping down from the ceiling into the light from a large half-spun web in its grip. Its dark shiny legs stretch out and almost block the entirety of the light for a moment. Panic paralyzes Silver. Dufresne knew he’s here, he’s showing off, trying to squeeze the last bit of fear out of him before he devours him. The beast slowly descends and then with a quick grace, lands in the center of the spotlight, its many eyes trained on the exact spot Silver stood. It crawls slowly, taking its time, and disappears in the bar of shadow in his direction. Silver skirts to an empty corner and rests Eleanor there before standing up to face Dufresne with little more than his wits.

Out of the darkness, Dufresne steps in front of him in his human form. His round glasses reflect the low light of the room. He’s smiling, of all things. “Mr. Silver. I’m really glad you’ve come to my humble abode for a visit.”

“Well, you didn’t do much to make it visitor friendly, I have to say.” Silver replies with a shaky smile of his own that falters when Dufresne steps forward slightly.

“Considering I’ve been busy chasing you through the dark, you can bring yourself to understand,” Dufresne replies and he almost appears bothered by the topic at hand.

Were they _really_ having this conversation?

“The spotlight is a bit tacky for my tastes. I’d—”

Dufresne coolly interrupts, “I’m not here for your bones.”  

Silver squints at him suspiciously, “I don’t understand.” He backs up slowly as Dufresne steps forward. It’s an ancient dance of cat and mouse.

“Your presence is requested. If you would have spoken with me instead of running off like fools, then Eleanor wouldn’t be dying from a deadly toxin.” Dufresne confesses curtly.

“Jesus…well you didn’t exactly make yourself appear the friendly ally.” Silver says, reluctant. He didn’t have an ounce of trust for this spider.

“Because I’m not. Mr. Silver, my patience is wearing thin.” Dufresne adds and then holds out his hand to him as if he wants to shake on it. Silver stares at it as if it can bite and it very well could at this point.

“What can you do to help Eleanor?” Silver questions and Dufresne pulls back his hand on a sigh.

“The longer we stand here the more likely it is that she will never wake.”

“I don’t trust a single word you fucking say. From what I gather, I don’t imagine that your king will be pleased if you let Eleanor die and this is on you. You did poison her when you gave chase.”

Dufresne remains silent, a growing anger beneath the surface. He’s easy to push but Silver knows he’s sufficiently outmatched. It doesn’t matter what Dufresne’s true intentions are, for he is as much of the dark as the rest. Each of them equally feed on bones and soil. They are equally apathetic to plight like the woods themselves. _They_ are all dangerous devourers, that trapped him and Eleanor here for their amusement.

Something sparks to life in the center of the room that draws their attention. It starts as a small ball of light and then grows larger until it begins to curl up into the air like a snake made of fire.

“What is this?” Dufresne asks, turning to eye Silver as if he’s the culprit.

Silver says nothing at that, marveling at the bit of light that’s slithering towards them. He didn't know why but it didn't frighten him. There’s a warmth there that’s familiar. It reaches them and begins to circle them both as if it’s getting ready to strike. Silver feels the heat of the flames, which are very real, on his skin. The fire snake hisses and lunges at Dufresne. It wraps itself viciously around him as he begins to scream. An inhuman shriek escapes his mouth. The snake made of flame, with its rage, jumps down Dufresne’s throat, lighting up his skin. Silver’s back hits the wall painfully and he watches in horrified awe as Dufresne’s eyes light up with fire.

His howling anguish didn’t last long but the flames remain casting out of his eyes like embers. Dufresne’s standing there like the fire snake’s puppet, watching Silver with disoriented confusion.

“John?” It says from a voice that is not Dufresne’s.

Silver slowly straightens up, keeping his back plastered to the wall but he says nothing, he can’t seem to form a word, let alone a sentence properly.

“I can see you.” And the fire snake smiles with Dufresne’s mouth, with what appears to be relief. The view isn’t exactly comforting but the _voice,_ it sounds like…

“…James?” Silver asks in a small voice.

“Yes!” It exclaims and walks forward, causing Silver to flinch. It stops its feet realizing the blatant fear that Silver is displaying.

“How the fuck is this possible?” Silver asks, his breath trapped in his throat. He realizes after all that’s happened that, that is a pointless question to ask.

“I’m afraid that’s a long story but I’m going to get you out of there…” James' voice says and Silver nods to hide the pounding of his heart. Dufresne’s face is staring at him with reverence which is extremely disturbing. “I can’t believe it…how..?” Silver manages.

He approaches Silver slowly with his hand held out, palm up, “Trust me?”

Considering who it is that is standing in front of him, made his stomach twist with the implication but the voice and the facial expressions were very much James Flint.

“Would you..humor me a moment?” Silver cautiously attempts and studies the odd face of the man in front of him. “What were the flowers that you brought me from the garden?”

Dufresne’s face stares at him pointedly and without much hesitation says, “Calla Lilies and we spoke about poisonous wonders.”

Silver feels something release from his chest at those words as if he’s been holding back the tide. He wants to embrace him; push himself in his rib cage and be done.

Silver lightly set his palm on top of his outstretched hand that waits patiently. “What exactly am I doing this for?” He asks, quietly. Light begins to form between them, a burning, scolding warmth that stings. Silver pulls his hand back with a grunt and examines his palm to see a small symbol seared into his skin that still glows like a fire beneath but the pain is minimal.

“Because of that mark, I will be able to find you,” James says and offers him a small smile. The embers in Dufresne’s eyes are waning, it wouldn’t be long until James is gone once again.

Silver blurts, “Eleanor…she found me. She’s alive.”

He watches the shock paint itself over Dufresne’s features and then with blinding brilliance the fire beneath his skin brightens to a startling degree. Silver stumbles back from the sight and observes as the fire consumes Dufresne, leaving only floating ash behind. James is gone and the spider is blackened rubble.

\--

He gulps in the stale air as if he’d been drowning. Miranda is above him with her hands on his shoulders, holding him there, grounding him.

“You’re back…James…can you hear me?” She repeats.

He blinks at her as sweat collects on his forehead. He fights against the cloudiness of the room and the tightening in his throat. His chest feels like it’s burning from the inside out. James tries to speak but he can’t force the words from his mouth.

“You gave yourself to the flame, you will need to recover now. Rest.” She says, calmly. His eyes flutter closed and it’s about the only thing he can muster. She grabs his hand and squeezes his palm with reassurance. He falls back into the dark again.

He dreams of blue eyes creeping up out of the shadows to meet with his own. He dreams of those hands grasping gently at his throat, his shoulders, his waist. He dreams of desperation and release. He dreams of splintered hearts and goodbyes. He sees the house melting with vines and he melts with it. He and the house are one entity; bound for eternity.

He blinks awake as if just a moment has gone by but the room is darkened and Miranda isn’t above him any longer. He forces himself to sit up on a cringe and he spots her by the fire, reading quietly.  She turns the page without looking at him and asks, “How do you feel?”

“Like I was swallowed by a flame.” James supplies and runs a hand through his hair to push it away from his forehead. His head feels as though it’s on the verge of an impending collapse. He continues, “I saw him.”

She shuts her book and clasps it in her lap. “I saw him too, I was there with you. Eleanor is alive.”

“Yes…” He breathes and he can’t even bring himself to feel relief because how long has she been there? How long has he left her in the dark? “I need to get them out.”

“You aren’t ready yet.” She admits.

He grimaces at her words and replies, “I’m fine.” He attempts to stand and then stumbles. He sets his hand on the table for support, knocking one of the candles to the floor. It rolls at his feet and he sighs softly. She says nothing even though he knows she’s watching him with a knowing smile.

“I can’t rest any longer, Miranda. I’ll go mad.” He confesses and looks up at her, her smile fades at his struggle.

“Then do something for me. Fetch me some sea berries from outside and if you can manage it then we can speak about you leaving.” Miranda commands and James knew he didn’t have much of a choice. He presses his lips together and nods once.

The walk up the stairs is a torturous one. It’s as if tiny daggers have taken root underneath his skin and all movement slices them deeper. Once he’s outside, even the dim light of the gloom is too bright. His eyes can’t adjust. Traversing the mud is as if he’s learning to walk for the first time. It grabs at his feet with a gulp and he’s slowly being swallowed up by it. The enormity of the situation rests on his shoulders and he can’t let it go. He must hold onto that desperation, he can’t rest. He makes it down the hill and to the shrubbery which is mostly dead and decaying. He’s never understood how one could worship mud; could bathe themselves in it and howl like a feral ghost. He spots the seaberries and gathers them in a tiny woolsack. His hands are shaking and he clenches his jaw to fight against it. The weakness and waning, the stumbling defeat. He must make haste. Time is too precious a thing now.

Since him.

He makes his way back up the hill and his movement gets easier with each step. Even fighting the mud is simpler than it was just moments before. The fire is dying beneath his skin, leaving room for more tribulation. His hands still shook as he opens the door to Miranda’s abode and steps down the perfect spiral stairs. He sets the seaberries on the table and she stands to look him over.

“I’m ready, Miranda. I cannot delay any longer.” He grits.

She forces him to study her eyes with her intense expression as if she’s staring straight into the depths of him and counting his demons one by one.

“You’ll need a boat since there is no ferryman to guide you across.” She declares.

“There’s no toll then?” James asks and speaks in mythologies.

Miranda is calm but serious when she says, “There is always a toll, James.”


	14. Cage of Bone

The water in the lake is the color of pitch against the gloam. Fog cascades and corrugates across it, which makes viewing anything beyond the water an impossible feat. The old wooden rowboat waits on the shore for him like an invitation. The water laps beneath it and shoves it gently against the dirt. He picks up the paddles from beside it as if someone had set them there for his benefit. He pushes it from the mud and leaps inside before the strange current snatches it.

There are creatures beneath the water; sea creatures of an unidentifiable type. They resemble a hideous sort of mermaid and he imagines they have spent many a day singing to the sun to resemble a sirens call. They leave him be as the mist claims his lungs. He rows in the fog, listening but unable to observe anything in front of him. It devours him in its embrace and the tendrils of it reach out like fingers to caress his face. The fog itself is a lonely ghost that didn’t get many visitors. It whispers to him softly, words he attempts to ignore.  

_‘you wove comfort in his fingers.’_

 He thinks of the wood of the ore beneath his palm and he thinks of the wood beneath his feet; the solid realness.

_‘you put the sky in his eyes.’_

He breathes heavily against the quickening strokes. He’s at the mercy of this specter that poses as the fog, that slips and slides in his mind. It pulls things out like strings. They tangle and untangle. He’s exposed.

_‘he made you an ineffable truce’_

“Leave me be, phantom.” James grits and pushes himself ever onward until the water itself begins to look like fog and he appears to be floating through it. He makes his way through the organs of this ancient thing; a lonely, forgotten thing. He imagines this place being beautiful once and lit up by sun rays, casting through the deep. He imagines these beings of this limbo having purpose once.

_‘he will forgive you.’_

“My thoughts are my own,” James replies in a hushed aggravated tone. His thoughts are freshly plucked for the stagnant and aimless.

“Is this the face which you seek in every corner?” A voice now; distinct. A familiar voice, a voice that sets his ribs apart to make room for his heart. He turns on a breath to see the fog appears to be creating a ghostly image of Silver in the boat. It even has his voice and it echoes into the ether.

“Don’t you dare wear his form!” James shouts.

“Born from smoke.” The fog Silver says and James swings the ore towards it violently, which sends the wisps away.

“You’re a fiend, sent to trick all that passes here.” James supplies as small grieving whispers surround him.

“I understand your lacking heart, James.” It says in Silver’s voice. Something it has no right to possess or torment him with. He closes his eyes tight and rows. He rows until his fingers ache, until his hands go numb until he’s anything but a rational piece of the world he left behind.

He feels the cold touch against his neck and it makes the air like icicles. This time it’s Thomas’ voice that swims up towards him, “I’m sorry you were alone. I can understand why you –”

“ENOUGH!” James bellows, rocking the boat and with the force of his anguish, the fog breathes and parts. There’s a path now through it, towards a small island. It’s an island of mud and bone. It’s an island at the edge of the world. It’s unwelcoming and foreboding in its existence.  He understands gateways more than these beings do, for himself is one. He paddles towards it, his eyes wet and his chest heaving. It’s hard to breathe in this splintered space. His boat hits the muddy landing and he crawls up out of it. His shoes slip as he travels up the small hill and the bones greet him in organized effigies.

 _‘comeback’_ The fog longs.

There is no going back. James knows that if this journey didn’t prove to be successful then he will consent himself to whatever darkness wakes inside him.

At the top of the hill is the fog posing as Thomas and his ghostly image smiles at him. James wants to rage into it, claim the fog as his madness but he didn’t. He stands there, quiet and aware of the way such a simple image can destroy him.

“Where is the entrance?” James asks quietly.

“Beneath me, beneath you, through the root.” Thomas’ voice says.

James looks down at the mud covering his shoes and the mud below him. He can’t set fire to mud, nor can he crumble it. It can devour him and mold him anew. He knows such a thing is easy to succumb to.  

“I don’t understand.” James questions and looks behind the fog to the bones sinking into the earth. He spots what appears to be an old cobblestone cover of a well. It’s partially buried in the mud of the hill.  He stumbles over to it and collapses to his knees in front of it. He digs with his hands through the wet and forces the large cover up from the earth. His lungs ache from the effort of it and he stares down that blackened pit that holds no light.

The fog whispers in Mrs. Hamilton’s voice, “It will take you below the mountain and from there you can burn away the midnight.”  

James didn’t have time for thought or hesitation. He let himself fall into it and the abyss pulls him down like a gift. Cold hands from the dirt reach out from the walls to slow his fall until he’s resting in the palms of them. They guide him, carry him through the tunnel. His heart hammers against his chest but he didn’t struggle and the hands are gentle. The world is as silent as the dead.

\--

Eleanor rests so still in Silver’s arms, her face is dirty and porcelain.  She’s still breathing but has yet to wake. His arms ache, his legs stumble, he’s been walking for hours, days, years. He didn’t know. There’s a burning firelight like an orb in the next room. He follows it, starved for its brilliance. He sees them then, in a small circular room. There’s a group of the fae worshipers standing in silence as if they are waiting for his arrival. Each of them is covered in mud and their faces painted with symbols.  Silver didn’t have much strength left in him for whatever this new test is.

“What do you want?” He asks the group of moving earth. Two of them spit, a few hiss and then they crowd him suddenly. He releases a yell at their onslaught and pushes, kicks, hits to send them back where they came from. They are unaffected by it and one of them steals Eleanor from his arms. He reaches out to her, punching the nearest one, sending the worshiper to the floor. There is too many of them, too many hands grab at him, his throat, his face, his arms, his legs. They’ve taken her. He struggles still in their suffocating embrace as they take him through the circular room and into a large cave where lanterns hung on ropes from the ceiling and vines crisscrossed pillars that disappear into the dark.  “Where are you taking us?” Silver attempts but they don’t speak, they just breathe and groan as if they’ve yet to learn how to use words.

There are cages hanging beside the lanterns, cages filled with occupants that all cry out at his entrance, beg and reach towards him. They take Eleanor down a separate dark pathway. “Where are you taking her?” Silver demands and is met with a soil covered hand to his mouth. At the far end of the room is a cage of bone, its rib cage door opened. They shove him inside beside another occupant who sits unaffected against the wall of it. Silver crawls quickly towards the opening but they slam it shut before he can reach it. Chains squeak and scratch as the cage he’s in is being lifted into the dark besides the burning lanterns. He moves towards the rib cage door and shoves it. It barely moves, it’s as if it’s been melted shut. He slams his fists into it, breaking the skin on his left hand and cradles it as a small amount of blood pools into his palm.

“The fuck you doin’ that for?” The voice comes from the other side of the cage. He glances towards her and spots just a swath of light revealing her clear blue eyes but the rest of her is hidden in shadow.

“The logical thing, trying to get out of this fucking cage, you?” Silver asks, snippily.

“Ain’t no use. New ones always try. No fucking use.”

“What the hell is happening? What are these cages for?” Silver questions and his new roommate moves completely from the lantern glow and into the dark corner.

“Fucking decorations until we’re nothin’ no more.”

Silver sighs, cringing when he wraps his hand from the cloth torn from his shirt, “What exactly does that mean?” He moves his back against the cage and it sways from his movement.

“Food for the beasts. No more, no less.” She replies.

“I see.” Silver says, shutting his eyes against the dim glow. “Were you one of them?”

She snaps, “What the fuck is it to you?”

Silver holds up his hands in idle surrender, “Just making conversation since we are both prisoners here. I figure a little mutual understanding can go a long way.”

She scoffs at him but didn't reply. They remain in silence for a time and Silver listens to the occupants in the other cages groan and creak against the metal. He can even hear the flickering light from lanterns, rasp against their holders. The fire sounds like unintelligible whispers.

“The name is John Silver by the way…” Silver breaks up the quiet but she doesn’t take the bait.

It’s silent again after that until exhaustion claims him, his eyes droop as his head lulls against the bones. He tries to force himself awake but his body protests the action. It’s as he’s about to fall into slumber when the sound of a cage squeaking far off catches his attention and he blinks awake. Someone is yelling and those protests soon turn to terrified screams. They're taking one of the prisoners somewhere and guessing by their reaction they won’t be coming back.

“Anne….” Comes the quiet voice in the corner. “Anne Bonny.”

\--

In the deepest dark, James uses the wall for support as he makes his way through the tunnel of eternity. The symbol on his hand isn’t glowing, which meant he’s nowhere near Silver yet. He hadn’t expected to be but the knowledge of it makes him want to run through recklessly. He wants to be the terror of this place, he wants the dark to scurry from him, for he is the one who will end it. He’s devoured their messenger, he’s destroyed their spider. He will be the Mountain’s immolation.

A rock wall twists in front of him revealing more blackness then before and the new passage smells of old decay. The opening of the labyrinth shifts around him and he listens. He listens to what it has to tell him, to all the others who had come to stand where he is. History tells him things in the dark, and it is through that silent revelation that he will illuminate it.

He closes his eyes for there is no use in keeping them open for the dark to feed on and he listens. He listens to the cracking and the shaping. The beasts of this maze scurry and huff. There’s a flapping of wings high in the dark and he knows it’s the things these wretched ones worship. The old ones. The ones that lived in this world long before the mountain broke open the earth. They are speaking to one another in a language he will never be able to understand. It’s a high pitch cacophony of a million voices in one sound. It grates at him, hurts his senses, makes the atmosphere painful to exist in. He spots something, the blinking of eyes above him, a low light of two beads of dark red. They could choose to snatch him up and tear him up but they don’t. Are they curious? Can they feel curiosity? Or is their thoughts long beyond human understanding? There’s a swooping sound and he feels the air created by it move the hair across his forehead.

They’re gathering for something, like a congregation. The thought reels through his mind and snuffs out any sense of direction he’s gained.

What are _they_ waiting for?


	15. To Conquer

Silver startles awake to the echo of a screeching howl. He shuffles and crawls towards the bars of bone and grips them while peering below. The howl soon becomes a chorus, reaching into the depths of above and below. The sound of it is monstrous and absolute.

“What’s happening?” Silver questions and turns to glance at Anne. She’s sitting with her knees to her chest in the gloom of the lantern light.

“Feedin’ time for the fae. I couldn’t fucking watch no more.” Anne replies and stretches her legs out in front of her. Her scraggly auburn hair hangs loose at her shoulders.

“So, you _were_ one of them then? How did you end up here?” Silver asks and he keeps his hands wrapped over the bars of bone.

“Just fucking said. Couldn’t watch no more. Ain’t a ritual, it’s a massacre.” She says, quietly. Silver watches the shapes of the soil folk move silently beneath the cages like sentries. They didn’t seem to speak to one another.

“And what does this ritual entail exactly?” Silver hesitantly requests. He moves and slumps down to face her. The cage digs uncomfortably into his legs and he keeps shifting for a better position.

“Singers of soil volunteer and the rest are taken from these wretches. It’s a sacred right to be chosen and devoured. Was a believer of it once but not no more.”

“You realized that letting people be eaten by monsters wasn’t a good practice?” Silver snippily replies and she sneers at him.

“Grow up in the mud with everyone tellin’ you you’re the fucking sacred lot and see how you’d fare.”

Silver tilts his head and says, “I understand but considering that we are now both at the bottom of the food chain of this ‘sacred’ thing, it doesn’t exactly inspire empathy from me.”

“The fuck did you come from anyway? You’re a different sort. Can sense it. Not human or a singer of soil.” Anne replies and Silver shakes his head with a small feigned laugh.

“I can assure you I’m no one.”

Anne sniffs the air and crawls closer to him before she presses her back to the bones again to get a better look. “One thing I know for fucking certain is you ain’t one of them and you ain’t one of us.” She’s resolute in her words and her piercing blue eyes bore into him like whirlpools. The building terror in his throat wants to be released and his smile erodes.

“How the hell would you know?” Silver asks and he’s feeling defensive. Defensive of his ‘nobody’ and ‘nothingness’ self.

“Don’t smell like the others, they all smell the same but you..” She sniffs the air again as a demonstration. “Smell like change.”

Silver ignores the growing unease and cracks a grin, “How does one ‘smell like change’?”

She crawls closer to him and he can see her features behind the caked mud on her cheeks. She says with intensity, “The feelin’ you get before lightning strikes.”

He stares at her quietly perplexed and immensely concerned. He doesn’t have the words resting on his tongue he wants to speak.

“Ain’t seen it yet but you will.”

With that, the cage jerks and begins to lower. Anne crawls quickly into a corner and Silver scrambles into the center. There’s a moment of pure squeaking metal that rips through his ears before they slam into the ground, knocking him off balance. The door bursts open and there are hands, so many hands, grabbing him and stealing him away.

“Wait…no!” Silver tries in vain as they tear him from the bars. 

“Rest easy John Silver, they ain’t gonna eat you!” Anne calls from the cage as they carry him away and her words are disturbingly comforting. He turns back to her as they lift him with unforgiving force. A smile graces her lips in the low light before he’s taken into another chamber out of the cage filled room. They force him to his knees in front of a burning firepit and shove dried dead flower petals into his hair. Another faceless follower puts a bone necklace over his head and gently rests it against his collarbone.

“…would any of you kindly tell me what the fuck is happening?” Silver asks harshly. His chin is suddenly painfully gripped and pulled towards the murky shadow. They proceed to paint a symbol on his cheek with their dirty finger in a messy scrawl. The face in front of him resembles a muddy smudge and nothing more. He can’t discern any proper features. His eyes widen from the disturbing revelation but they keep his face locked in their grasp until the symbol’s finished. They lift him afterward and take him away from the warmth and light of the flame. It lashes out at his exit from the room and all is dark, it’s as if he’s back in the maze again.

Ahead is a large imposing room giving off a soft light. There are hundreds of lanterns hanging from a ceiling that’s too tall to observe. Fog unnaturally settles here in the crevices and imperfections of the stone. There’s a tree at the back of the room which has roots that wind and twist, claiming everything in its wake. In front of the gnarled tree is a throne made of twigs and bone. It looks as though it would eviscerate him if he were to approach it.

A man, a beast, a king sits on the throne with his crown of muddy bone. His face is covered in dirt drawn symbols and his eyes look vicious in the swinging shadows from the lanterns above them. Leaves, vines, and fur encapsulated him like clothing. The intimidation Silver feels is not like any he’s experienced. The terror, however, is something that pervades endlessly in a place like this.

He observes a throng of those ‘singers of soil’ crawl and climb behind the king. They fan out like a small army of earth, all with their eyes affixed on Silver. Silver moves back out of instinct and small vines reach out to him. They wrap around his bare ankles, holding him there. He lets out a surprised yelp at the contact but the vines aren’t stilted with thorns.

Silver manages to speak, “Where is Eleanor?”

Birds or what he thinks are birds, take flight from the tree and land on the protruding bone of the crown. Their feathers move like they are made of fog and ash.

“Are you to kill me?” Silver asks.

The folk bathed in dirt move further into the room beneath the lanterns and whisper amongst themselves. The king’s voice is low, like the voice of a wolf if one could speak, “You’re the Bull.”

Silver scoffs and hopes he comes off as confused. “I’ve tried to tell them, anyone who will listen, that I’m really not who they seem to think I am. Whatever it may encompass.”

“Yet you dine with the hound?” He questions as if it somehow means something to Silver as if he’s committed some egregious offense.

“Hound? I’m not…I really don’t understand.” Silver grimaces as the vines tighten around his ankles like small hungry snakes.

“Don’t play the fool, pretender.” Charles Vane’s words lash out at him.

“Well, that’s the thing. I am the fool in this predicament. I have absolutely no fucking clue what’s happening and why.” Silver admonishes and he hopes he appears truthful because fool or no he is beyond the thought that he may have lost his grip on reality.

Vane tilts his head at him as if Silver perplexed him. _This_ being of the woods, the king of the ‘folk of the fae’ is bewildered by him. Silver didn’t know how to process that.

Vane speaks low and abrupt, “The house on the hill that sits on the crest of this world is what will be the end of us all. It cannot be allowed to exist any longer. You…are the only one that can enter that abomination, therefore _you_ are the only one who can end it.”

Silver shakes his head slowly, glancing around at the shadows of the folk that stand still; dormant. James is bound to that house, he is that house, that precipice.

“Why the fuck would I do that?” Silver asks, gaining more bravery then his survival instincts would like.

Vane appears to be growing more aggravated by the minute. “Your hound is the house made real, the house made bone and given thoughts. An abomination. He is draining the life from us, from this wood. He is the absence of it.”

“You’ve lived together in symbiosis, unwillingly and not by any choice of either of yours but it’s worked. It’s kept things balanced.” Silver tries and he knows he’s grasping at the darkness, the tip of all that he knows of this place.

Vane’s voice echoes loudly and swims up beyond the swinging lights, “This mountain will not contain us, we have suffered under the weight of it for long enough. I will not sit in the shadow of it any longer.”  

Silver swallows, his heart drumming against his ribs, “Then you want to conquer? You want to take the other ‘world’ that the house protects as your own?”

“It is ours, it’s always been ours!” Vane bellows and stands; his dark expression holds shadows as prisoners across his form.

Silver releases a breath and faces that darkness with nothing at his disposal to conquer it. “I won’t do it. I won’t be a puppet.”

A feral grin begins to stretch Vane’s features in bitter amusement. “Take him to the feeding chamber.” He demands.

The vines release Silver’s ankles and the loss of pressure forces him to his knees; his palms press into the ground. In a flurry of movement, the soil folk crowd him like scurrying insects. They pass him above them in wave of movement that resembles a hushed and composed mosh pit. To his credit, he does try to fight them off with teeth and fist but they carry him back into that deep dark.

\--

A crumbling entrance is formed in the dark and James keeps his palm against the wall to navigate towards it. The beasts above have all gone, gone to wherever it was they were called to. He didn’t need to busy himself with worrying about it, he has the dark to contend with. The symbol on his palm has yet to alight and he tries not to let the implication fester in his mind. The longer he walks, the further from time itself he travels. He wonders if eventually with each new footstep a new century will be born. He steps inside the opened passage and spots a line of glowing mushrooms leading to a pedestal. The vines wrap up the glow and twist it along the stone. There’s someone lying still on the pedestal on top of the fungi. Someone that was handled with care, someone that they deemed worthy of such a position. Was this place a tomb? A cracked sarcophagus?  

He nears the eerie display against his better judgment. When the glow begins to dim from his shadows cast over them, he notices the porcelain face. It strikes him blindly and almost sends him reeling into a frenzy.

“Eleanor!” He calls and runs through the glow, crushing the mushrooms beneath him. They whisper in agony as their glow is snuffed out. He reaches the pedestal that is bathed in an ethereal blue light and studies her pale face. She resembles something out of a fable. He blinks rapidly and his eyes become wet as he reaches out to feel for her pulse. He can feel her faint heart beneath his fingertips and it’s enough. It’s enough for him to release a pained breath and touch her chilled cheek. The last time he had seen her, she had also been in a forever sleep. It’s some kind of cruel fate that they should meet like this again.

There’s a shuffling, crumbling sound and a shriek from behind him. He turns to see one of the soil folk have spotted him. They don’t get very far in their panicked retreat from him, for James is quick. He grabs a splintered piece of jawbone from the dust and silences them with one quick stroke before they can announce his presence. He suspects they already sense him here but he wants them to wonder in fear, he wants them to spook at shadows. He wants them to question if he has come to claim what is owed.


	16. The Catacombs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a warning this chapter is a bit more disturbing and gory than usual. Thank you for reading!

The darkness has a shape. Many shapes and names born from screams. Silver sees this, as he watches above him in rapt terror as the soil folk carry him. He sees their gods in the dark, their eyes above, all seeing. They force him to his knees in a dirt filled circle in the shape of an arena. This place is ancient as if sacrifices were held here centuries ago; all accumulating to the present. Silver can’t help but darkly wonder how he, being one man, could satisfy the many pairs of eyes above.

Their king sits half shadowed in a wooden thrown draped in fur and trinkets. He’s painting his face with mud, preparing himself for whatever is to come.

“So, that’s it then? This is where we part ways?” Silver tries and Vane doesn’t speak a word to him, he just continues to cover his face.

There’s a thumping rhythm to this circle, like a muffled beating heart as if the earth is alive beneath his knees. He leans down, presses his palms into the dirt and listens closer. It’s unmistakable, the mountain is alive.

“Your hound has kept you in the dark.” Vane booms and Silver sits up but remains on his knees.

“Not exactly sure how he could have explained this to me? It’s kind of a ‘see it to believe it’ type of situation.” Silver postures.

“I’m talking about who you are and where you came from,” Vane replies.

“I was a caregiver before I became your ritual sacrifice.” Silver supplies and fails at an attempt at a smile. His hands are shaking, his entire body feels as though it could collapse and be consumed by the heartbeat of the dirt beneath him.

Vane laughs, of all things. It’s low and amused. “Is that what you are to me? To us? To them?” He points above to the darkness.

“I had assumed unless I’m reading the situation wrong.” Silver replies and didn’t glance above him at the blinking crimson eyes.

A crowd of soil folk that had carried him to this arena now fan out in front of him, lining up with eager dirty faces.  Some smile at him, almost shyly and others stare above them in awe.

“They’ve come to welcome you,” Vane replies and stands from his throne. Silver feels the chill air of wings swarming above him. It dances his hair across his cheeks. The sound of echoing flapping comes from behind him. Vane bows and the soil folk follow immediately, getting on their knees with Silver. The lanterns flicker and the vines shuffle against the rock walls. Silver turns slowly to glance behind him. At the beginnings of the room, there are three of them. Those eyes that shook terror from the depths of him. Blackness surrounds them and he can barely make out the wings but their shapes are inhuman, contorted and monstrous. Silver wants to crawl away and hide in a deeper dark away from those eyes but he can’t move. Vane stands and sits back down in his throne, presiding over the arena. The soil folk remain kneeling as if they are waiting for something.

“What do you remember?” Vane asks him and it snaps Silver’s eyes in his direction. He can hardly breathe, not with those _things_ behind him.

“I…don’t understand?” Silver replies.

“What’s the first thing you remember? What of your childhood?” Vane questions. Silver eyes the dark around him frantically before settling on a flickering lantern closest to him.

“What does it matter?” Silver asks because that is a very odd line of questioning for the situation they found themselves in.

“You can’t remember, can you?” Vane’s voice is a vicious echo and Silver closes his eyes against the rest.

“Of course I can…” Silver replies defensively and Vane’s low throated laugh is his only answer.

He _can_ remember.

He can remember…

He remembers rain as if he was born in it. He remembers the droplets hitting his eyelids, claiming his face and drowning his limbs. He remembers a gravel path but it was Mrs. Hamilton’s gravel path. His thoughts are blurred and hard to grasp. It’s this place, it’s confusing his senses thoroughly.

“You’ve done something to my mind.” Silver accuses.

“Memory is palpable. You can mold it like clay and give it worth.” Vane answers and Silver feels hollow as if those words sailed from his mouth and made a home in all that’s left.

Silver whispers, “You’ve taken something from me…”

“If it brings you comfort to blame me and the soil for your woes then go ahead. The feeding is nigh!” He calls and the soil folk gathered in front of him cry out in excitement. Some of them start singing, something throaty, like a growl.

The three-winged creatures with their red pooled eyes swoop up into the dark and then dive into the crowd of soil folk. Silver immediately falls backwards on his palms in wide-eyed horror as the creatures began tearing them apart. None of them ran, none of them look terrified. They wanted this to happen to them. They are in delirious happy awe of it. They were chosen to be fed to their gods. The arena began to fill with their blood. It splashes on Silver’s clothes, in his hair, his skin. It isn’t long before he’s bathed in it and a scream escapes his throat. It is drowned out by the singing growls of the soil folk as they are devoured. He’s a witness to it. Their gods pay him no mind. The creatures don’t stop, they rip into all of them, sending what’s left into the dirt.  Silver turns then, his heart climbing up into his throat and he crawls. His hands slip in the wet earth but he pulls himself forward through the flood of blood. He hears it then above all other noise, above the chewing and tearing flesh. A clicking sound, a ticking sound. A small oval circle suddenly opens in ringlets beneath him and he releases a wretched sob when he falls into it.

\--

James places a kiss on Eleanor’s forehead. “I promise I’ll come back for you when this is done.” He whispers, sincerely. He watches her pale quiet face a while longer before leaving her side and heading into the glowing dark. He hears the sound of two hissing soil folk as he enters the corridor. They flee when he draws near. Their bare feet smack against the stone but he knows he’ll catch up to them soon enough. He’ll catch up to all of them.

A searing burn on his palm caught his attention and he stares in bewilderment when he notices that the symbol on his hand is a glowing flame. Silver is near.

He takes off then, through the gloomy blue haze of fungi. He watches his palm brighten with such intensity, in front of an oval opening carved into the wall. He climbs inside it, skirting through the overgrown spider webs; the remnants of the spider that is no more. Inside, he finds a mountain of bones, reaching high up to the ceiling, where a small circular hole is opened like a skylight and leaking light inside. He spots movement at the top of the skeleton mountain and hears echoed whimpers. James moves quick and walks to the foot of the tall mound. A man stands in the streak of light. He’s covered completely in blood, fresh blood, that still drips down his skin. Those blue eyes though, they stand out like beacons amongst the decay and they widen exorbitantly when they spot him.

“JAMES!” Silver calls in utter relief. He begins toppling down the bone mountain towards him and James tries and fails to climb through. His chest is full, pulled taut by the ragged image of John. This is no doppelganger sent to trick him by the fiends. Miranda’s firebrand told him so. This is his Silver.

“I cannot believe it..” James breathes but Silver never reaches him. Out of the hole in the ceiling, a winged beast swoops whip quick and snatches Silver like a field mouse. Silver reaches out to him in horrified desperation before he’s pulled upwards into the dusty light. The hole in the ceiling shuts loudly and shakes the bones apart from the force of it. James yells, almost tearing his throat in two from it. It’s wild, it’s frenzied and almost inhuman. The small glimpse of him broke apart his resolve like shards. The glowing symbol on his palm fades and he snarls at the dark. The fae had him in their sacred chambers but Flint will burn them all. He stalks through the maze of darkness and even the vines scurry away from him, latching themselves in cracks. Wherever there is soil folk, they scream and point as his presence. They hiss and try to hide from the terror but he can see them, even with his eyes closed.

\--

There’s a dim flickering light beneath his eyelids that dances in his subconscious as he wakes. Silver sees the blurry misshapen shadows from a flame on the rock ceiling above him.

_James._

He saw James.

He sits up quick on a breath and hits his head on the low ceiling above him. He releases a groan and rests his hand on his forehead to quell it. James is here and he almost reached him, if it hadn’t have been for…

Panic seizes him as he searches the low light of the room with his eyes. It appears to be a mausoleum of some kind. Old tombs rest inside walls with trinkets adorning them covered in ancient dust and webs. He was lying in a space in the wall meant for a coffin.  He stands up at the realization and swallows while examining the empty rectangle of rock. The candle holder beside him is a skull with melted wax covering the holes where the eyes used to be. There is light at least and his eyes adjust appropriately. Had that creature brought him here? His hands, his skin, his hair are all still covered in the dried blood of the soil folk. His stained bare feet tiptoe gently along the dusty floor down the corridor. The next room opened to a small alchemy lab like something out of the dark ages. There are large vats and old vials lined up along the walls.

A voice startles him from a darkened corner, “Told you, you was special.”

Silver peers in its direction and sees a rusted metal cage sitting on the floor against the wall in the corner. Inside, is Anne, with her knees up and scraggly hair covering half her face. Her piercing blue eye that isn’t covered, is visible in the candlelight. Silver quickly kneels in front of the cage and grabs the giant spider webbed padlock that kept it closed. He pulls on it uselessly with a grunt.

“No use, little Bull. They wanna pull secrets from me.” Anne says and moves slowly closer to him. Her fingers poke through the bars as she grips them.

“Who has the key?” Silver asks and pulls roughly on the old lock again.

“The keeper of the ‘combs. We call him Teach. Was exiled down here to rot with the rest.” She gives a small bitter smile.

“Exiled?” Silver asks and pulls off spider webs that stick to his clothes.  

“Used to be fucking king, not no more,”  Anne says and she almost appears saddened by this fact. There’s a hissing sound coming from the hall and Silver quickly crawls and hides behind one of the vats. One of the soil folk appears to inspect the room and kick Anne’s cage for good measure. Anne hisses back. They sniff the air as a dog would and Silver presses his back against the cold metallic of the vat. It isn’t long before Silver feels a chilled hand wrap around his neck and force him out. The grip is tight and immovable from his throat and he chokes against it as they begin to drag him forward through the room.

“Leave him be! Belongs to the king, that one!” Anne calls and Silver knocks against one of the musty tables, where he swipes a dulled knife from the myriad of tools.

The growly voice of the soil worshiper resounds, “There is no king. Not down here.”

The grip on his throat tightens and the vicious eyes of the worshiper hold a growing fury. Silver slices quick and uncoordinated across the worshiper’s throat. They release him as he sucks in air falling to his knees. The worshiper gurgles and collapses with a dull thud, lifelessly to the floor. Dark blood, almost black, pools around what’s left.

“Fuck…” Silver breathes and stands quickly, running into one of the empty tables.

“Had to be done. Had to be done.” Anne says, coolly.

Silver stares down at the motionless body, his hands are shaking and his eyes are wild. He’d never killed anyone before and the thought of it churns his stomach. He peers down at his stained hands, still holding the rusted knife.

“Find Teach. Let him tell you a story.” Anne speaks softly and then moves back into the shadow away from the offending light.


	17. The King in the Labyrinth

Crushed gnarled flower petals stick between his toes as Silver sneaks barefoot through the long passageway of the catacombs. The rusted knife is still gripped firmly in his palm in case he has to make another regrettable decision. The soil worshiper he slew rests behind his eyes when he closes them. He’s burned the image there, as a reminder. _Don’t forget your humanity._ He thinks it’s easy to lose it in a place such this. In the dark. The dark has never been a kind thing but it has also never been entirely cruel either. It is as apathetic as the woods that surround this hell.

There’s a stone door at the far end that looms distinctly ahead. It’s tall and crumbling as if it’s been here since the earth laid claim over this place. It opens without volition and Silver startles back at the entrance. Beyond, are vines and roots that hang from the dirt of the ceiling. They are wrapped in a messy archway that leads beyond where he can see. Some of the dirt crackles and drops into his hair from above and he blinks away the soil. Soon, Silver thinks he’ll become a tree. No one would be able to recognize him from beneath the mud. Except _him_.

Beyond the rooted hallway, the passageway opens to a small room with books and rusted cracked trinkets. There is an old spring, a worn belt, a paint chipped button, a rusted thimble, all resting with care in the inlets of this room. Silver eyes them with a quirk of his brow and taps a small porcelain bear with a missing ear.

“I collect old memories.” A deep smooth voice resounds from behind him and Silver jumps with a breathless curse. He squeezes the handle of the knife and spies a man sitting at an old dusty table with his back to him, fixing something. There is a clicking and clinking sound as his shoulder blades move with the effort. He has long dark hair that stretches beyond his shoulders and Silver can spot the beginnings of a dark beard.

“Are you Teach?” Silver inquires.

He cranks something and then soft music chimes from the music box he’s fixing. He moves it towards the edge of the table. It’s off key and missing notes, which makes it all the more creepily depressing to listen to.

“I don’t normally like visitors and especially those that are unannounced.” He states and stands from the table. The sad music slowly evaporates and ends unfinished.

“It wasn’t exactly by choice that I ended up here.” Silver replies and Teach turns to face him. He’s tall and imposing; darkly covered in shadow. He studies him openly with an odd interest.

“You reek of death.” Teach supplies and Silver shrugs hopelessly.

“I..was in the feeding chamber.”

“Ah, I see. They gave you that honor then. Come closer, please.” Teach orders and Silver blinks at him, before slowly moving his bare feet over the cold dirt ground.

“You aren’t from here or there.” Teach bluntly states and he’s staring at him with the most curious expression. He’s somehow fascinated by that fact. A fact which Silver himself is coming to find rather irritating since everyone in this mountain wishes to be cryptic.

“I wouldn’t know apparently.” Silver replies with a strained smile that fades as soon as it’s born.

There’s amusement in Teach’s eyes and Silver holds his gaze with a practiced bravery. A practice he has tried to put to use here and failed in some respects.

“You’re from the house on the hill.” Teach simply states as if that answers everything at once but it answers nothing.

“Yes, I was a caregiver to the family that lives there.” Silver replies and he can do this. He can do normal conversation. He can do polite niceties with a man that lives in a catacomb with walls made of skulls.

“In that room there, “Teach motions to an archway of twigs, “is a pond. Get cleaned up and join me in the hovel beyond.”  

Teach didn’t give him time to argue, he leaves him as Silver opens his mouth to speak. He slowly moves towards the twig archway and glares at it as if it could come to life and snatch him away. He moves through the short hollowed pathway and into a larger room with a pond jutting out from the rock. There are glowing mushrooms at the edges of the water and on the ceiling that light the water up clear blue.

He sticks his toe in to experiment and the water is warm, there’s a comforting aroma seeping off the surface. “Please just be a pond.” Silver speaks to the water but the water thankfully didn’t say anything back. He hesitantly begins to sink inside the cozy embrace of the liquid. He dunks his head under and the world is silenced.

The pond as it turns out is just pond and Silver can’t be more relieved. Dried blood still lingered on his clothes but most of it has been washed away from his hair and skin. He didn’t feel like a ritual sacrifice gone wrong anymore.

Beyond the quiet room is another darkened passageway made mostly of root that twists into the next room. A room that looked very much like the inside of a small cottage without windows. The walls are thatched to cover the bone and the candles flicker warmly over the collected trinkets. Teach sits at a table reading a tattered book as Silver approaches him.

“I want Anne released.” Is the first thing Silver says. Teach pointedly waits for him to sit before shutting his book and resting it on the table. Silver complies and sits in the wooden rickety chair across from him. He studies Silver intensely as if he’s trying to read everything that rests behind his eyes.

“Part of my gift has been to understand one’s memories and now that the death has been washed away from you, I thought you’d become clearer. Yet, you are a blurred fractured thing of pieces and moments. You do not have memories for me to steal.” Teach calmly acquiesces. Silver releases a small disbelieving laugh. “What the fuck does that mean? I have memories.” Silver insists and Teach isn’t offended by the defensive turn of the conversation.

“Beyond that house, beyond James Flint. What do you remember before? I can’t see a thing. It is either closed off to me or there is nothing there to see in the first place.” Teach replies and waits patiently for him to answer. Silver leans back in the chair, resting his hands in his lap and blinks down at his fingers.  

“I remember…rain and my limbs were drowning in it but that’s it. I don’t remember anything before that. I think it’s this place. All of you.” Silver accuses.

“You may be evolving due to circumstance but I assure you, I’d be the one doing the stealing and I have not taken anything from you. Charles Vane does not have the capability.” Teach admits.

“If not you then who took them from me? Because I know they were there. I remember the feeling. The history is there.” Silver replies, resolute.

“Your name…?” Teach asks.

“John Silver.”

Realization dawns on his features as it had for anyone else that seemed to hear it. Yet, Silver is left in that forever dark.

“Ah…I see.” Teach says and is suddenly closed off to the subject.

“Care to share what you see?” Silver pushes.

“John Silver doesn’t have a history. He is no one. Nothing.” Teach replies as if he’s repeating Silver’s thoughts.

Silver eyes him in the eerie disquiet. The shadows appear more menacing than when he first entered this room. They slowly creep up and consume the light that surrounds them. They are alive like this entire place is. Breathing and with ill-intent.

“I want Anne released and I want to know where Eleanor is. I want to know why the fuck I’m here and how the fuck to get out of this goddamn maze of death.”

Silver knows it isn’t wise to toss his anger at Teach but he’s tired and he thinks centuries may have crawled by in his absence.

“You were brought to the catacombs by the fae for a purpose, you were brought to me.” Teach pushes an intricately carved box slowly across the table towards Silver as if it’s a gift. Silver didn’t make a move to open it.

“Anne is part of the soil as I am, she will stay with me. I do not know where Eleanor is but I suspect somewhere close to Charles Vane.” Teach says and lifts the lid on the box to reveal an iron serrated dagger with a symbolic pattern carved into the hilt similar to the brand on Silver’s palm. “I want to make you a deal, John.”

Silver moves his eyes from the dagger back to Teach who looks calm and aware. Aware of everything, as if he can feel and breathe with this place of shadow. As if he is this place come to life much like James is the house itself.

“What deal is this?” Silver questions, hesitant and in the usual state of quiet rising panic this place provokes.

“Use this dagger to kill Charles Vane. Afterwards, I will rule in his stead again as it should always be. I will keep the balance as it should always be.” Teach reveals.

“Who exactly is Charles Vane to you?” Silver asks, ignoring the fact that he could not even dream of climbing through the sacred chamber and shoving a dagger into his gut.

“He was like a son to me. Until he betrayed me and exiled me to rule in my stead. It isn’t a unique story or one that needs writing down. It happened as all things happen and this will happen as it must.” Teach’s confidence is insurmountable and Silver has none to spare.

“How in the hell am I supposed to do this?” Silver asks and Teach smiles at him as if he’s amused.

“James Flint stalks the maze does he not? Find him. Let the hound slay the king.”

\--

Time moves differently in the dark. He isn’t sure whether it’s night or day above but he’s yet to need any proper sleep which should be disconcerting. The fact that Silver is growing accustomed to such a place should be even _more_ disconcerting. Silver rests against the cold wall of the small room since Teach had left him for business elsewhere, most likely to fix a clock or a broken forgotten teacup. He moves his leg, knocking a few books off the wall and they slide to his feet. The one on top reads: _‘Embalming Techniques’_ and that isn’t something Silver really found _any_ interest in. He moves it aside towards the shelf and beneath it is another familiar book.

_‘The King in the Labyrinth’_

It was James’ book that he had written. He reaches forward and grabs it from the floor. The cover looks the same as all the rest. He wonders if the pages would be blank as all the others were when he attempted to read them in the library. He rests his hand on the cover to feel the coarse material and opens it to the first page. This one isn’t blank to his delight and the dedication is to Thomas Hamilton. He runs his fingers over the parchment that feels aged and turns to the first chapter which is untitled. What’s written there catches him completely off guard.

_He is no one belonging to nothing._

The rest of the page is blank as if it’s supposed to be that way and he shakes his head in immense confusion. “What the fuck?” He exclaims quietly to the page.

“John.” Comes Teach’s voice from the beginning of the room. Silver snaps out of his increasing dread and looks over at him.

“If you will follow me, I will show you a way through the catacombs.” Teach supplies and clasps his hands patiently. As if he’s a lion that knew when to strike and when to observe. Silver reluctantly abandons James’ book and it lies there as if it’s watching him leave.

He didn’t glance back at it again and Teach didn’t question his odd behavior, nor does he glare or force Silver to follow. This is Silver’s choice or at least he wants him to think it is.

“I imagine Flint will be reluctant to go along with this plan, seeing as he has started on a warpath with my people. I believe you can subdue him.” Teach states and walks ahead of him grabbing a cobwebbed torch from the wall. Silver isn’t fond of Teach’s wording.

“Subdue him?” Silver asks.

“Get him to see reason, that getting rid of the one who is poisoning us will surely be enough to repair the damage wrought by it.” Teach adds and lights the brilliant flame. It dances in the reflection of his eyes and Silver catches a glimpse of the lion underneath. They walk on through the lighted path as shadows scurry and falter in their footsteps.

“The book that was in your library.” Silver begins and then stops, looking down at his bare feet which create dust patterns against the stone.

“That question isn’t for me to answer but I am sure if you ask Flint, the answer will be waiting for you if you wish to seek it. Now, let’s find the Hound.” Teach replies, wisely.

It isn’t long when they start to come upon scattered bodies of the soil folk, lying silently in the strewn bones and blood. It’s not as if Silver should be surprised by this but he is all the same.

“You’re the only one he’ll listen to and without you then I would have to do the hard thing.” Teach confesses and waves the torch around the corner. Small spiders crawl back into the cracks of the stone beneath them.

“You’d have to kill him?” Silver guesses and glances down at the brand on his palm which refuses to glow.

“Too much destruction and I for one am weary of it.” Teach surmises.

Teach may be a lion, James may be a hound and Silver may be a nothing, a whisper, but the one thing, the selfish thing, is that Silver didn’t give a damn what destruction it would or wouldn’t cause as long as James makes it out of this alive. As long as the two of them can walk away from here even if the mountain has to burn. It terrifies Silver and Teach is too busy navigating to pluck out his thoughts and analyze them. Whatever outcome grants both of their freedoms he will take it, no matter the cost.   


End file.
